Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Never
Relief
Men
Progress
Life
Present
Forget
Happy
True
Forgetting
Littles
Unhappiness
Little
Enjoyment
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Each person's work is always a portrait of himself.
Samuel Johnson
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
A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists without any practical regard to morals and religion he may be learning not to live but to reason... while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unreformed.
Samuel Johnson
Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal.
Samuel Johnson
Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.
Samuel Johnson
Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.
Samuel Johnson
Language is the dress of thought.
Samuel Johnson
Such are the vicissitudes of the world, through all its parts, that day and night, labor and rest, hurry and retirement, endear each other such are the changes that keep the mind in action: we desire, we pursue, we obtain, we are satiated we desire something else and begin a new pursuit.
Samuel Johnson
A man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice.
Samuel Johnson
Power is gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent.
Samuel Johnson
A lexicographer, a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.
Samuel Johnson
The mischief of flattery is, not that it persuades any man that he is what he is not, but that it suppresses the influence of honest ambition, by raising an opinion that honour may be gained without the toil of merit.
Samuel Johnson
If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim.
Samuel Johnson
In misery's darkest cavern known, His useful care was ever nigh Where hopeless anguish pour'd his groan, And lonely want retir'd to die.
Samuel Johnson
Since every man is obliged to promote happiness and virtue, he should be careful not to mislead unwary minds, by appearing to set too high a value upon things by which no real excellence is conferred.
Samuel Johnson
Remember that nothing will supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity long continued will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible.
Samuel Johnson
The purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside
Samuel Johnson
Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
Samuel Johnson
Advice is offensive, it shows us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves.
Samuel Johnson
A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.
Samuel Johnson
