Samuel Johnson Quotations | Page 19

A minute analysis of life at once destroys that splendor which dazzles the imagination. Whatsoever grandeur can display, or luxury enjoy, is procured by offices of which the mind shrinks from the contemplation. All the delicacies of the table may be traced back to the shambles and the dunghill; all magnificence of building was hewn from the quarry, and all the pomp of ornament dug from among the damps and darkness of the mine.

Life consists not of a series of illustrious actions or elegant enjoyments. The greater part of our time passes in compliance with necessities, in the performance of daily duties, in the removal of small inconveniences, in the procurement of petty pleasures; and we are well or ill at ease, as the main stream of life glides on smoothly, or is ruffled by small obstacles and frequent interruption.

Life, however short, is made still shorter by waste of time.

Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.

If misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill-fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced.

Misfortunes should always be expected.

A woman of fortune being used the handling of money, spends it judiciously; but a woman who gets the command of money for the first time upon her marriage, has such a gust in spending it, that she throws it away with great profusion.

Money confounds subordination.

The commodiousness of money is indeed great; but there are some advantages which money cannot buy, and which therefore no wise man will by the love of money be tempted to forego.

Oratory is the power of beating down your adversary's arguments and putting better in their place.

Wheresoe'er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new: Endless labor all along, Endless labor to be wrong: Phrase that Time has flung away; Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.

He that shall peruse the political pamphlets of any past reign will wonder why they were so eagerly read, or so loudly praised.

In all political regulations, good cannot be complete, it can only be predominant.

In such a government as ours no man is appointed to an office because he is the fittest for it--nor hardly in any other government--because there are so many connections and dependencies to be studied.

I have always said the first Whig was the Devil.

He that has once concluded it lawful to resist power, when it wants merit, will soon find a want of merit, to justify his resistance to power.

Some have little power to do good, and have likewise little strength to resist evil.

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

Remember that nothing will supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity long continued will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible.

The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendor cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate.

What is said upon a subject is gathered from an hundred people.

Let us be quick to repent of injuries while repentance may not be a barren anguish.

Leave to Heaven the measure and the choice.

That what cannot be repaired is not to be regretted.

Repentance, however difficult to be practiced, is, if it be explained without superstition, easily understood. Repentance is the relinquishment of any practice from the conviction that it has offended God.

Spite and ill-nature are among the most expensive luxuries in life.

More is learned in a public than in a private school, from emulation. There is the collision of mind with mind, or the radiation of many minds pointing to one center.

To go and see one druidical temple is only to see that it is nothing, for there is neither art nor power in it; and seeing one is quite enough.

Self-love is a busy prompter.

It may be no less dangerous to claim, on certain occasions, too little than too much. There is something captivating in spirit and intrepidity, to which we often yield as to a resistless power; nor can we often yield as to a resistless power; nor can he reasonably expect the confidence of others who too apparently distrusts himself.

Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge is to a forest.

In his comic scenes, Shakespeare seems to produce, without labor, what no labor can improve.

It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept; and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence.

The stream of Time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare.

Preserve me from unseasonable and immoderate sleep.

Probably no one will ever know whether it is better to wear a nightcap or not.

The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout.

The love of retirement has in all ages adhered closely to those minds which have been most enlarged by knowledge, or elevated by genius. Those who enjoyed everything generally supposed to confer happiness have been forced to seek it in the shades of privacy.

Social sorrow loses half its pain.

Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past without looking forward to the future.

To grieve for evils is often wrong; but it is much more wrong to grieve without them. All sorrow that lasts longer than its cause is morbid, and should be shaken off as an attack of melancholy, as the forerunner of a greater evil than poverty or pain.

The limbs will quiver and move after the soul is gone.

Depend upon it, sir, it is when you come close to a man in conservation that you discover what his real abilities are; to make a speech in a public assembly is a knack.

Whatever professes to benefit by pleasing must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply something sudden and unexpected; that which elevates must always surprise.

I am a friend to subordination, as most conducive to the happiness of society. There is a reciprocal pleasure in governing and being governed.

Suspicion is very often a useless pain.

A man who always talks for fame never can be pleasing. The man who talks to unburthen his mind is the man to delight you.

The necessary connexion of representatives with taxes, seems to have sunk deep into many of those minds, that admit sounds, without their meaning.

Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without any tears.

He who would govern his actions by the laws of virtue must regulate his thoughts by those of reason.

Thought is always troublesome to him who lives without his own approbation.

Presumption will be easily corrected; but timidity is a disease of the mind more obstinate and fatal.

A fallible being will fail somewhere.

A small country town is not the place in which one would choose to quarrel with a wife; every human being in such places is a spy.

Ancient travelers guessed; modern travelers measure.

He that would travel for the entertainment of others should remember that the great object of remark is human life.

He that resigns his peace to little casualties, and suffers the course of his life to be interrupted for fortuitous inadvertencies or offences, delivers up himself to the direction of the wind, and loses all that constancy and equanimity which constitutes the chief praise of a wise man.

Whoever shall review his life, will find that the whole tenor of his conduct has been determined by some accident of no apparent moment.

Liberty is the parent of truth, but truth and decency are sometimes at variance. All men and all propositions are to be treated here as they deserve, and there are many who have no claim either to respect or decency.

Truth allows no choice.

Truth has no gradations; nothing which admits of increase can be so much what it is, as truth is truth. There may be a strange thing, and a thing more strange. But if a proposition be true, there can be none more true.

Truth, such as is necessary to the reputation of life, is always found where it is honestly sought.

Never mind the use--do it!

The synonyme of usury is ruin.

The resolution of the combat is seldom equal to the vehemence of the charge.

The charm of London is that you are never glad or sorry for ten minutes together; in the country you are one or the other for weeks.

I doubt if there ever was a man who was not gratified by being told that he was liked by the women.

No man sympathizes with the sorrows of vanity.

The greatest human virtue bears no proportion to human vanity. We always think ourselves better than we are, and are generally desirous that others should think us still better than we think ourselves. To praise us for actions or dispositions which deserve praise is not to confer a benefit, but to pay a tribute. We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable, and which we are desirous to strengthen by a new suffrage; we have always hopes which we suspect to be fallacious, and of which we eagerly snatch at every confirmation.

We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable.

A country gentleman should bring his lady to visit London as soon as he can, that they may have agreeable topicks for conversation when they are by themselves.

Political liberty is only good insofar as it produces private liberty.

Most men are more willing to indulge in easy vices than to practise laborious virtues.

All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us.

The king who makes war on his enemies tenderly distresses his subjects most cruelly.

Wasting a fortune is evaporation by a thousand imperceptible means.

Riches seldom make their owners rich.

To purchase Heaven has gold the power? Can gold remove the mortal hour? In life can love be bought with gold? Are friendship's pleasures to be sold? No--all that's worth a wish--a thought, Fair virtue gives unbribed, unbought. Cease then on trash thy hopes to bind, Let nobler views engage thy mind.

Wealth is nothing in itself; it is not useful but when it departs from us.

When the desire of wealth is taking hold of the heart, let us look round and see how it operates upon than whose industry or fortune has obtained it. When we find them oppressed with their own abundance, luxurious without pleasure, idle without ease, impatient and querulous in themselves, and despised or hated by the rest of mankind, we shall soon be convinced that if the real wants of our condition are satisfied, there remains little to be sought with solicitude or desired with eagerness.

Whosoever shall look heedfully upon those who are eminent for their riches will not think their condition such as that he should hazard his quiet, and much less his virtue, to obtain it, for all that great wealth generally gives above a moderate fortune is more room for the freaks of caprice, and more privilege for ignorance and vice, a quicker succession of flatteries, and a larger circle of voluptuousness.

You never find people laboring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful income.

I believe it will be found that those who marry late are best pleased with their children; and those who marry early, with their partners.

Mutual complacency is the atmosphere of conjugal love.

Fate wings, with every wish, the afflictive dart, Each gift of nature, and each grace of art.

The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another.

Wit will never make a man rich, but there are places where riches will always make a wit.

Wit is that which has been often thought, but never before was well expressed.

He who would have fine guests, let him have a fine wife.

Being married to those sleepy-souled women is just like playing at cards for nothing: no passion is excited and the time is filled up. I do not, however, envy a fellow one of those honeysuckle wives for my part, as they are but creepers at best and commonly destroy the tree they so tenderly cling about.