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The mathematicians are well acquainted with the difference between pure science, which has only to do with ideas, and the application of its laws to the use of life, in which they are constrained to submit to the imperfections of matter and the influence of accidents.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Ideas
Laws
Acquainted
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Mathematicians
Well
Pure
Imperfections
Matter
Influence
Imperfection
Life
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Submit
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Science
Accidents
Constrained

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Happiness is enjoyed only in proportion as it is known and such is the state or folly of man, that it is known only by experience of its contrary.
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What is the reason that women servants ... have much lower wages than men servants ... when in fact our female house servants work much harder than the male?
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If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur.
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Claret is the liquor for boys port for men but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.
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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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I look upon this as I did upon the Dictionary: it is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.
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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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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.
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We never do anything consciously for the last time without sadness of heart.
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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.
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No man can perform so little as not to have reason to congratulate himself on his merits, when he beholds the multitude that live in total idleness, and have never yet endeavoured to be useful.
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Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, I did not give it to the man, but to humanity.
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Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
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Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.
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The difference between coarse and refined abuse is the difference between being bruised by a club and wounded by a poisoned arrow.
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Smoking is a shocking thing - blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people's mouths, eyes, and noses, and having the same thing done to us.
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Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favour.
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Most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them.
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A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.
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