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The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Mind
Future
Breaking
Always
Moment
Immediately
Never
Hope
Flight
Natural
Satisfied
Away
Losing
Flights
Moments
Objects
Felicity
Human
Present
Schemes
Humans
Pleasure
Anticipation

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Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.
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To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
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Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.
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The arguments for purity of life fail of their due influence, not because they have been considered and confuted, but because they have been passed over without consideration.
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The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef love, like being enlivened with champagne.
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Spring is the season of gaiety, and winter of terror in spring the heart of tranquility dances to the melody of the groves, and the eye of benevolence sparkles at the sight of happiness and plenty: in winter, compassion melts at universal calamity, and the tear of softness starts at the wailing of hunger and the cries of the creation in distress
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In Shakespeare's plays, the mourner hastening to bury his friend is all the time colliding with the reveller hastening to his wine.
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Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
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Slavery is now nowhere more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.
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All imposture weakens confidence and chills benevolence.
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Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. Every advance into knowledge opens new prospects, and produces new incitements to farther progress.
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As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles.
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Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality they discourse like angels, but they live like men.
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The vicious count their years virtuous, their acts.
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Among the calamities of war may be numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.
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Art hath an enemy called ignorance.
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Those who are in the power of evil habits must conquer them as they can and conquered they must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be attained: but those who are not yet subject to their influence may, by timely caution, preserve their freedom.
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Idleness and timidity often despair without being overcome, and forbear attempts for fear of being defeated and we may promote the invigoration of faint endeavors, by showing what has already been performed.
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Do not ... hope wholly to reason away your troubles do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind.
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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.
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