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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
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
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Progress
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Never
Relief
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.
Samuel Johnson
To love their country has been considered as virtue in men, whose love could not be otherwise than blind, because their preference was made without, a comparison but it has never been my fortune to find, either in ancient or modern writers, any honourable mention of those, who have, with equal blindness, hated their country.
Samuel Johnson
There is little peace or comfort in life if we are always anxious as to future events. He that worries himself with the dread of possible contingencies will never be at rest.
Samuel Johnson
There are occasions on which all apology is rudeness.
Samuel Johnson
I wish you would add an index rerum, that when the reader recollects any incident he may easily find it.
Samuel Johnson
Let him go abroad to a distant country let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.
Samuel Johnson
Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.
Samuel Johnson
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.
Samuel Johnson
It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage.
Samuel Johnson
London! the needy villain's general home, The common sewer of Paris and of Rome! With eager thirst, by folly or by fate, Sucks in the dregs of each corrupted state.
Samuel Johnson
Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without any very accurate inquiry whether it is right.
Samuel Johnson
Few of those who fill the world with books, have any pretensions to the hope either of pleasing or instructing. They have often no other task than to lay two books before them, out of which they compile a third, without any new material of their own, and with very little application of judgment to those which former authors have supplied.
Samuel Johnson
..to write and to live are very different. Many who praise virtue, do no more than praise it.
Samuel Johnson
There ambush here relentless ruffians lay, And here the fell attorney prowls for prey.
Samuel Johnson
Every man has something to do which he neglects, every man has faults to conquer which he delays to combat.
Samuel Johnson
Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle for the calamities of life, like the necessities of Nature, are calls to labor and diligence.
Samuel Johnson
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
A voyage to the moon, however romantick and absurd the scheme may now appear, since the properties of air have been better understood, seemed highly probable to many of the aspiring wits in the last century
Samuel Johnson
In questions of law or of fact conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him the rights of another man they must be known by rational investigation or historical inquiry.
Samuel Johnson
Many falsehoods are passing into uncontradicted history.
Samuel Johnson
