Samuel Johnson Quotations | Page 17

In the condition of men, it frequently happens that grief and anxiety lie hid under the golden robes of prosperity; and the gloom of calamity is cheered by secret radiations of hope and comfort; as in the works of nature, the bog is sometimes covered with flowers, and the mine concealed in the barren crags.

He that applauds him who does not deserve praise, is endeavoring to deceive the public; he that hisses in malice or sport, is an oppressor and a robber.

Hunger is never delicate.

To build is to be robbed.

Those authors are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence.

Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject.

People may be taken in once, who imagine that an author is greater in private life than other men.

There is nothing more dreadful to an author than neglect; compared with which reproach, hatred, and opposition are names of happiness; yet this worst, this meanest fate, every one who dares to write has reason to fear.

Avarice is a uniform and tractable vice; other intellectual distempers are different in different constitutions of mind. That which soothes the pride of one will offend the pride of another, but to the favor of the covetous bring money, and nothing is denied.

It is surely very narrow policy that supposes money to be the chief good.

You despise a man for avarice; but you do not hate him.

Of a thousand shavers, two do not shave so much alike as not to be distinguished.

Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse.

History can be formed from permanent monuments and records; but lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost forever.

The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, were exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue.

The parallel circumstances and kindred images to which we readily conform our minds are, above all other writings, to be found in the lives of particular persons, and therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography.

Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgment and friendship are like being enlivened.

The booksellers are generous liberal-minded men.

To forget, or pretend to do so, to return a borrowed article, is the meanest sort of petty theft.

Differences, we know, are never so effectually laid asleep as by some common calamity; an enemy unites all to whom he threatens danger.

Such are the vicissitudes of the world, through all its parts, that day and night, labor and rest, hurry and retirement, endear each other; such are the changes that keep the mind in action: we desire, we pursue, we obtain, we are satiated; we desire something else and begin a new pursuit.

The general remedy of those who are uneasy without knowing the cause is change of place.

Consider what importance to society the chastity of women is. Upon that all the property in the world depends. We hang a thief for stealing a sheep; but the unchastity of a woman transfers sheep and farm and all from the right owner.

There is such a difference between the pursuits of men in great cities that one part of the inhabitants lives to little other purpose than to wonder at the rest. Some have hopes and fears, wishes and aversions, which never enter into the thoughts of others, and inquiry is laboriously exerted to gain that which those who possess it are ready to throw away.

I do not envy a clergyman's life as an easy life, nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life.

Commerce can never be at a stop while one man wants what another can supply; and credit will never be denied, while it is likely to be repaid with profit.

Commerce however we may please ourselves with the contrary opinion, is one of the daughters of fortune, inconstant and deceitful as her mother. She chooses her residence where she is least expected, and shifts her abode when her continuance is, in appearance, most firmly settled.

There may be community of material possessions, but there can never be community of love or esteem.

The botanist looks upon the astronomer as a being unworthy of his regard; and he that is glowing great and happy by electrifying a bottle wonders how the world can be engaged by trifling prattle about war and peace.

The equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.

Contempt is a kind of gangrene which, if it seizes one part of a character, corrupts all the rest by degrees.

No man can fall into contempt but those who deserve it.

It is almost always the unhappiness of a victorious disputant to destroy his own authority by claiming too many consequences, or diffusing his proposition to an indefensible extent.

Every man has some favorite topic of conversation, on which, by a feigned seriousness of attention, he may be drawn to expatiate without end.

Unconstraint is the grace of conversation.

The coquette has companions, indeed, but no lovers,--for love is respectful and timorous; and where among her followers will she find a husband?

Sir, when you have seen one green field, you have seen all green fields. Let us walk down Cheapside.

Where necessity ends, desire and curiosity begin; and no sooner are we supplied with everything nature can demand than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites.

Cowardice encroaches fast upon such as spend their lives in company of persons higher than themselves.

Once a coxcomb, always a coxcomb.

Governors being accustomed to hear of more crimes than they can punish, and more wrongs than they can redress, set themselves at ease by indiscriminate negligence, and presently forget the request when they lose sight of the petitioner.

An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty.

Cunning differs from wisdom as twilight from open day.

The whole power of cunning is privative; to say nothing, and to do nothing , is the utmost of its reach. Yet men, thus narrow by nature and mean by art, are sometimes able to rise by the miscarriages of bravery and the openness of integrity, and, watching failures and snatching opportunities, obtain advantages which belong to higher characters.

Their origin is commonly unknown; for the practice often continues when the cause has ceased, and concerning superstitious ceremonies it is in vain to conjecture; for what reason did not dictate, reason cannot explain.

No man is defeated without some resentment which will be continued with obstinacy while he believes himself in the right, and asserted with bitterness, if even to his own conscience he is detected in the wrong.

The dependant who cultivates delicacy in himself very little consults his own tranquillity.

Every desire is a viper in the bosom, who while he was chill was harmless; but when warmth gave him strength, exerted it in poison.

It is very common for us to desire most what we are least qualified to obtain.

The desires of man increase with his acquisitions.

Diffidence may check resolution and obstruct performance, but compensates its embarrassments by more important advantages; it conciliates the proud, and softens the severe; averts envy from excellence, and censure from miscarriage.

As he that lives longest lives but a little while, every man may be certain that he has no time to waste. The duties of life are commensurate to its duration; and every day brings its task, which, if neglected, is doubled on the morrow.

Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding; and those who are conscious of their inferiority have the modesty not to talk; when they have drunk wine, every man feels himself happy, and loses that modesty, and grows impudent and vociferous; but he is not improved; he is only not sensible of his defects.

By those who look close to the ground dirt will be seen. I hope I see things from a greater distance.

Such is the emptiness of human enjoyment that we are always impatient of the present. Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust.

Though the discoveries or acquisitions of man are not always adequate to the expectations of his pride, they are at least sufficient to animate his industry.

A blaze first pleases and then tires the sight.

Dishonor waits on perfidy. A man should blush to think a falsehood; it is the crime of cowards.

Distance either of time or place is sufficient to reconcile weak minds to wonderful relations.

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction. A man is pleased that his wife is dressed as well as other people, and the wife is pleased that she is dressed.

I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning, for that is sure good. I would let him at first read any English book which happens to engage his attention; because you have done a great deal when you have brought him to have entertainment from a book. He'll get better books afterwards.

It is wonderful what a difference learning makes upon people even in the common intercourse of life, which does not appear to be much connected with it.

When emulation leads us to strive for self-elevation by merit alone, and not by belittling another, then it is one of the grandest possible incentives to action.

Where there is emulation, there will be vanity; where there is vanity, there will be folly.

I have adopted the Roman sentiment, that it is more honorable to save a citizen than to kill an enemy.

The relief of enemies has a tendency to unite mankind in fraternal affection.

Pound St. Paul's Church into atoms, and consider any single atom; it is to be sure, good for nothing; but put all these atoms together, and you have St. Paul's Church. So it is with human felicity, which is made up of many ingredients, each of which may be shown to be very insignificant.

Providence has fixed the limits of human enjoyment by immovable boundaries, and has set different gratifications at such a distance from each other, that no art or power can bring them together. This great law it is the business of every rational being to understand, that life may not pass away in an attempt to make contradictions consistent, to combine opposite qualities, and to unite things which the nature of their being must always keep asunder.

The gloomy and the resentful are always found among those who have nothing to do or who do nothing.

You cannot give me an instance of any man who is permitted to lay out his own time contriving not to have tedious hours.

As all error is meanness, it is incumbent on every man who consults his own dignity, to retract it as soon as he discovers it.

No man can have much kindness for him by whom he does not believe himself esteemed, and nothing so evidently proves esteem as imitation.

To revenge reasonable incredulity by refusing evidence, is a degree of insolence with which the world is not yet acquainted; and stubborn audacity is the last refuge of guilt.

Never believe extraordinary characters which you hear of people. Depend upon it, they are exaggerated. You do not see one man shoot a great deal higher than another.

Such is the constitution of Man that labor may be said to be its own re-ward.

He who is extravagant will quickly become poor; and poverty will enforce dependence, and invite corruption.

Profuseness is a cruel and crafty demon, that gradually involves her followers in dependence and debt; that is, fetters them with irons that enter into their souls.

Faction seldom leaves a man honest, however it might find him.

A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.

Falsehood always endeavors to copy the mien and attitude of truth.

Large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most common topics of falsehood.

Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil.

Fear naturally quickens the flight of guilt.

Timidity is a disease of the mind, obstinate and fatal; for a man once persuaded that any impediment is insuperable has given it, with respect to himself, that strength and weight which it had not before.

He that is much flattered soon learns to flatter himself.

It requires but little acquaintance with the heart to know that woman's first wish is to be handsome; and that, consequently, the readiest method of obtaining her kindness is to praise her beauty.

Of him that hopes to be forgiven it is indispensably required that he forgive. It is, therefore, superfluous to urge any other motive. On this great duty eternity is suspended, and to him that refuses to practise it, the throne of mercy is inaccessible, and the Saviour of the world has been born in vain.

They who look but little into futurity, have, perhaps, the quickest sensation of the present.

Gaiety is to good-humor as animal perfumes to vegetable fragrance. The one overpowers weak spirits, the other recreates and revives them. Gaiety seldom fails to give some pain; good-humor boasts no faculties which every one does not believe in his own power, and pleases principally by not offending.

Games are good or bad as to their nature; all may be perverted.

Genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy which collects, combines, amplifies and animates.

It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called, by the generality of mankind, a particular genius.

Glory, the casual gift of thoughtless crowds! Glory, the bribe of avaricious virtue!

For gold the hireling judge distorts the laws.

The dangers gather as the treasures rise.

Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits; the other recreates and revives them.

Good-humor is a state between gayety and unconcern,--the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another.

Gratitude is a species of justice.

The business of life summons us away from useless grief, and calls us to the exercise of those virtues of which we are lamenting our deprivation.

One of the most pernicious effects of haste is obscurity.