Samuel Johnson Quotes - Page 38

• The uncertainty of death is, in effect, the great support of the whole system of life.

  Samuel Johnson

  Death, Support, Effects

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• All to whom want is terrible, upon whatever principle, ought to think themselves obliged to learn the sage maxims of our parsimonious ancestors, and attain the salutary arts of contracting expense; for without economy none can be rich, and with it few can be poor.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Thinking, Principles

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1857). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.97

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• Economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty, and of ease, and the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness and health.

  Samuel Johnson

  Integrity, Parent, Liberty

  John Hawkesworth, Samuel Johnson, Richard Bathurst, Joseph Warton (1793). “The Adventurer”, p.164

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• The mere power of saving what is already in our hands must be of easy acquisition to every mind; and as the example of Lord Bacon may show that the highest intellect cannot safely neglect it, a thousand instances every day prove that the humblest may practise it with success.

  Samuel Johnson

  Hands, Mind, Example

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• The prospect of penury in age is so gloomy and terrifying that every man who looks before him must resolve to avoid it; and it must be avoided generally by the science of sparing.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Age, Looks

  Samuel Johnson (1761). “The Rambler: In Four Volumes”, p.21

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• Who left nothing of authorship untouched, and touched nothing which he did not adorn.
  [Lat., Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit; nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.]

  Samuel Johnson

  Authorship, Touched, Left

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• No evil is insupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong.

  Samuel Johnson

  Evil, Consciousness

  Samuel Johnson (1977). “Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.126, Univ of California Press

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• Still we love
  The evil we do, until we suffer it.

  Samuel Johnson

  Evil, Suffering, Stills

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper”, p.530

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• Complaints are vain; we will try to. do better another time. To-morrow and to-morrow. A few designs and a few failures, and the time of designing is past.

  Samuel Johnson

  Failure, Past, Design

  Samuel Johnson (1892). “Letters of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.”, Ayer Company Pub

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• He that is pushing his predecessors into the gulf of obscurity, cannot but sometimes suspect, that he must himself sink in like manner, and, as he stands upon the same precipice, be swept away with the same violence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Obscurity, Violence, Pushing

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.38

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• None of the projects or designs which exercise the mind of man are equally subject to obstructions and disappointments with the pursuit of fame.

  Samuel Johnson

  Disappointment, Exercise, Design

  Samuel Johnson (1761). “The Rambler: In Four Volumes”, p.217

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• The love of fame is a passion natural and universal, which no man, however high or mean, however wise or ignorant, was yet able to despise.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wise, Passion, Mean

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• Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings because they are his own.

  Samuel Johnson

  Friends, Failing, Manners

  Samuel Johnson (1827). “The Rambler”, p.167

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• Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions. What we have missed long enough to want it, we value more when it is regained; but that which has been lost till it is forgotten will be found at last with little gladness, and with still less if a substitute has supplied the place.

  Samuel Johnson

  Friendship, Love Is, Like Love

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An essay on his life and genius”, p.89

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• The good of our present state is merely comparative, and the evil which every man feels will be sufficient to disturb and harass him if he does not know how much he escapes.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Evil, Doe

  Samuel Johnson (1827). “The Rambler”, p.244

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• What is good only because it pleases cannot be pronounced good till it has been found to please.

  Samuel Johnson

  Goodness, Found, Please

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1799). “Boswell's Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides, and Johnson's Diary of A Journey Into North Wales”, p.232

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• Every man that has felt pain knows how little all other comforts can gladden him to whom health is denied. Yet who is there does not sometimes hazard it for the enjoyment of an hour?

  Samuel Johnson

  Pain, Health, Men

  Samuel Johnson (1784). “The Rambler: In Four Volumes..”, p.100

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• Health is certainly more valuable than money; because it is by health that money is procured; but thousands and millions are of small avail to alleviate the protracted tortures of the gout, to repair the broken organs of sense, or resuscitate the powers of digestion. Poverty is, indeed, an evil from which we naturally fly, but let us not run from one enemy to another, nor take shelter in the arms of sickness.

  Samuel Johnson

  Running, Health, Broken

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1811). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, L. L. D.: In Twelve Volumes”, p.270

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• None are happy but by anticipation of change.

  Samuel Johnson

  Happiness, Anticipation

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• 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.

  Samuel Johnson

  School, Mind, Radiation

  James Boswell, Alexander Napier, Richard Duppa, Robina Napier, Samuel Johnson (1884). “The life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D. Together with the journal of a tour to the Hebrides: James Boswell”

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• 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.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Temples, Enough

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1786). “Boswell's Life of Johnson: including Boswell's Journal of a tour of the Hebrides, and Johnson's diary of A journey into North Wales”, p.150

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• Every man is prompted by the love of himself to imagine that he possesses some qualities superior, either in kind or degree, to those which he sees allotted to the rest of the world.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Quality, Degrees

  Samuel Johnson (1827). “The Rambler”, p.135

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• Self-love is a busy prompter.

  Samuel Johnson

  Love Is, Self, Self Love

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper: Waller, Butler, Rochester, Roscommon, Otway, Pomfret, Dorset, Stepney, J. Philips, Walsh, Dryden”, p.469

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• 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.

  Samuel Johnson

  Yield, May, Littles

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.1

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

  Samuel Johnson

  Forests

  In Hester Lynch Piozzi 'Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson' (1786) p. 59

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