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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.

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
Moments
Faculty
Inexhaustible
Art
Observation
Eagerness
Nature
Stores
Diligent
Human
Intellect
Faculties
Humans
Indeed
Novelty
Every
Necessary
Produces
Alacrity
Something
Produce
Preserve
Quickened
Life
Moment
Preserves
Intellects

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It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.
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He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel.
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Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.
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Hoc age ['do this'] is the great rule, whether you are serious or merry whether ... learning science or duty from a folio, or floating on the Thames. Intentions must be gathered from acts.
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Your aspirations are your possibilities.
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The king who makes war on his enemies tenderly distresses his subjects most cruelly.
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We may have many acquaintances, but we can have but few friends this made Aristotle say that he that hath many friends hath none.
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Games are good or bad as to their nature all may be perverted.
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The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
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Learn the leading precognita of all things-no need to turn over leaf by leaf, but grasp the trunk hard and you will shake all the branches. Advice cherished by Samuel Johnson that that, if one is to master any subject, one must first discover its general principles.
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Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use.
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Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.
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Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility.
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This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.
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Books have always a secret influence on the understanding we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas he that reads books of science, thogh without any fixed desire of improvement, will grow more knowing.
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The highest panegyric, therefore, that private virtue can receive, is the praise of servants.
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If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it to go to the beginning. He may perhaps not feel again the inclination.
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When there is no hope, there can be no endeavor.
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A woman of fortune being used the handling of money, spends it judiciously but a woman who gets the command of money for the first time upon her marriage, has such a gust in spending it, that she throws it away with great profusion.
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A person loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal.
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