Quote

It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy unenvied, to be healthful without physic, and secure without a guard to obtain from the bounty of nature, what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of artists and attendants, of flatterers and spies.

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
Art
Secure
Procure
Nature
Privilege
Healthful
Without
Artists
Spies
Great
Poverty
Bounty
Healthy
Obtain
Help
Compelled
Physic
Happy
Guard
Attendants
Helping
Wealthy
Flatterers

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The end of writing is to instruct the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing.
Samuel Johnson
Image
There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow.
Samuel Johnson
Image
No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance.
Samuel Johnson
Image
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.
Samuel Johnson
Image
That man is never happy for the present is so true, that all his relief from unhappiness is only forgetting himself for a little while. Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The business of a poet is to examine not the individual but the species to remark general properties and large appearances.
Samuel Johnson
Image
He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
Samuel Johnson
Image
In a man's letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other.
Samuel Johnson
Image
It was the maxim, I think, of Alphonsus of Aragon, that dead counsellors are safest. The grave puts an end to flattery and artifice, and the information we receive from books is pure from interest, fear, and ambition. Dead counsellors are likewise most instructive, because they are heard with patience and with reverence.
Samuel Johnson
Image
I soon found that wit, like every other power, has its boundaries that its success depends upon the aptitude of others to receive impressions and that as some bodies, indissoluble by heat, can set the furnace and crucible at defiance, there are min
Samuel Johnson
Image
Men go to sea, before they know the unhappiness of that way of life and when they have come to know it, they cannot escape from it, because it is then too late to choose another profession as indeed is generally the case with men, when they have once engaged in any particular way of life.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Abuse is often of service. There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.
Samuel Johnson
Image
It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.
Samuel Johnson
Image
I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.
Samuel Johnson
Image
No evil is insupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercized in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.
Samuel Johnson