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Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause a while from learning to be wise. There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,- Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Life
Passing
Thine
World
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Learning
Pauses
Turn
Toil
Wise
Scholar
Deign
Eyes
Passings
Assail
Turns
Jail
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Eye
Envy
Ills

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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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.
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Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.
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Unintelligible language is a lantern without a light.
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To be flattered is grateful, even when we know that our praises are not believed by those who pronounce them for they prove, at least, our power, and show that our favour is valued, since it is purchased by the meanness of falsehood.
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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.
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Read the book you do honestly feel a wish and curiosity to read.
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We never do anything consciously for the last time without sadness of heart.
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A book should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it.
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None but a fool worries about things he cannot influence.
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Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity but art and nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects, and every moment produces something new to him who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation.
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It is man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.
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Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
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Avarice is a uniform and tractable vice other intellectual distempers are different in different constitutions of mind. That which soothes the pride of one will offend the pride of another, but to the favor of the covetous bring money, and nothing is denied.
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Do not ... hope wholly to reason away your troubles do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind.
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Rags will always make their appearance where they have a right to do it.
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Nothing has tended more to retard the advancement of science than the disposition in vulgar minds to vilify what they cannot comprehend.
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Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion.
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Dishonor waits on perfidy. A man should blush to think a falsehood it is the crime of cowards.
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Being married to those sleepy-souled women is just like playing at cards for nothing: no passion is excited and the time is filled up. I do not, however, envy a fellow one of those honeysuckle wives for my part, as they are but creepers at best and commonly destroy the tree they so tenderly cling about.
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Books, says Lord Bacon, can never teach us the use of books the student must learn by commerce with mankind to reduce his speculations to practice. No man should think so highly of himself as to think he can receive but little light from books no one so meanly, as to believe he can discover nothing but what is to be learned from them.
Samuel Johnson