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The disturbers of our happiness, in this world, are our desires, our griefs, and our fears.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
Teacher
Translator
Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Desires
Grief
Happiness
Desire
Life
World
Griefs
Fears

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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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In questions of law or of fact conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him the rights of another man they must be known by rational investigation or historical inquiry.
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To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude it is not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
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Poetry cannot be translation
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To fix the thoughts by writing, and subject them to frequent examinations and reviews, is the best method of enabling the mind to detect its own sophisms, and keep it on guard against the fallacies which it practices on others
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...it will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor.
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Suspicion is very often a useless pain.
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The richest author that ever grazed the common of literature.
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Scarce any man becomes eminently disagreeable but by a departure from his real character, and an attempt at something for which nature or education has left him unqualified.
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Occupation alone is happiness.
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There are occasions on which all apology is rudeness.
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The time will come to every human being when it must be known how well he can bear to die.
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Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.
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Conjecture as to things useful, is good but conjecture as to what it would be useless to know, is very idle.
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Virtue is too often merely local.
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Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim and when you are calculating, calculate.
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But to the particular species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some early conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and emulation.
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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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I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.
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Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.
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