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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
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Moment
Immediately
Never
Hope
Flight
Natural
Satisfied
Away
Losing
Flights
Moments
Objects
Felicity
Human
Present
Schemes
Humans
Pleasure
Anticipation
Mind
Future
Breaking

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He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.
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To scatter praise or blame without regard to justice is to destroy the distinction of good and evil. Many have no other test of actions than general opinion and all are so far influenced by a sense of reputation that they are often restrained by fear of reproach, and excited by hope of honour, when other principles have lost their power.
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Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet. From those sounds which we hear on small or on coarse occasions, we do not easily receive strong impressions, or delightful images and words to which we are nearly strangers, whenever they occur, draw that attention on themselves which they should transmit to other things.
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The desires of man increase with his acquisitions.
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Wickedness is always easier than virtue for it takes the short cut to everything.
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I remember a passage in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.
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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.
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Knowledge always desires increase, it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself.
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The balls of sight are so formed, that one man's eyes are spectacles to another, to read his heart with.
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A fallible being will fail somewhere.
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It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination.
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An epithet or metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art an epithet or metaphor drawn from art degrades nature.
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If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it to go to the beginning. He may perhaps not feel again the inclination.
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In order that all men might be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
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Suspicion is very often a useless pain.
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Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religions hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper and deeper.
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I do not see, Sir, that it is reasonable for a man to be angry at another, whom a woman has preferred to him but angry he is, no doubt and he is loath to be angry at himself.
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We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide.
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High people, sir, are the best take a hundred ladies of quality, you'll find them better wives, better mothers, more willing to sacrifice their own pleasures to their children, than a hundred other woman.
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About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right.
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