Quote

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.

Samuel Johnson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Though
Frustrations
Happiness
Deluded
Less
Frequent
Hope
Dreadful
Always
Extinction
Frustration
However
Necessary

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.
Samuel Johnson
Image
We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Diffidence may check resolution and obstruct performance, but compensates its embarrassments by more important advantages it conciliates the proud, and softens the severe averts envy from excellence, and censure from miscarriage.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Abuse is often of service. There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Credulity is the common failing of inexperienced virtue and he who is spontaneously suspicious may justly be charged with radical corruption.
Samuel Johnson
Image
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without any tears.
Samuel Johnson
Image
One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
Samuel Johnson
Image
No one will persist long in helping someone who will not help themselves.
Samuel Johnson
Image
As a madman is apt to think himself grown suddenly great, so he that grows suddenly great is apt to borrow a little from the madman.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Learn that the present hour alone is man's.
Samuel Johnson
Image
We must consider how very little history there is--I mean real, authentic history. That certain kings reigned and certain battles were fought, we can depend upon as true but all the coloring, all the philosophy, of history is conjecture.
Samuel Johnson
Image
How small of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Still to ourselves in every place consigned, Our own felicity we make or find. With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Our aspirations are our possibilities.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is expected is already destroyed.
Samuel Johnson