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There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.

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
Life
Memories
Recollection
Existence
Trace
Greater
Employed
Happiness
Shame
Back
Neither
Virtuously
Able
Sorrow
Usefully
Look
Certainly
Tokens
Looks
Progress
Excite

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When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.
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Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent.
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You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.
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No evil is insupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong.
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Lichfield, England. Swallows certainly sleep all winter. A number of them conglobulate together, by flying round and round, and then all in a heap throw themselves under water, and lye in the bed of a river.
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All imposture weakens confidence and chills benevolence.
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Composition is for the most part an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.
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I fly from pleasure, said the prince, because pleasure has ceased to please I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others.
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A continual feast of commendation is only to be obtained by merit or by wealth: many are therefore obliged to content themselves with single morsels, and recompense the infrequency of their enjoyment by excess and riot, whenever fortune sets the banquet before them.
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There are occasions on which all apology is rudeness.
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At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.
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Applause abates diligence.
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It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.
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It is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful.
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[The poet] must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place.
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Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us.
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It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.
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Vulgar and inactive minds confound familiarity with knowledge, and conceive themselves informed of the whole nature of things, when they are shown their form or told their use.
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No knowledge is useless, with the exception of heraldry.
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Our aspirations are our possibilities.
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