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Attainment is followed by neglect, possession by disgust, and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to many another course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last

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
May
Days
Applied
Firsts
Courses
Disgusting
First
Course
Followed
Many
Lasts
Neglect
Remark
Life
Happiness
Greek
Disgust
Last
Possession
Malicious
Another
Achievement
Attainment
Two
Marriage
Remarks

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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It is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. You may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learned them both.
Samuel Johnson
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No evil is insupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong.
Samuel Johnson
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We are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure.
Samuel Johnson
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To scatter praise or blame without regard to justice is to destroy the distinction of good and evil. Many have no other test of actions than general opinion and all are so far influenced by a sense of reputation that they are often restrained by fear of reproach, and excited by hope of honour, when other principles have lost their power.
Samuel Johnson
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The richest author that ever grazed the common of literature.
Samuel Johnson
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That eminence of learning is not to be gained without labour, at least equal to that which any other kind of greatness can require, will be allowed by those who wish to elevate the character of a scholar since they cannot but know that every human acquisition is valuable in proportion to the difficulty of its attainment.
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Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new.
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As a madman is apt to think himself grown suddenly great, so he that grows suddenly great is apt to borrow a little from the madman.
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Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religions hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper and deeper.
Samuel Johnson
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To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship.
Samuel Johnson
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He that never labors may know the pains of idleness, but not the pleasures.
Samuel Johnson
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A good wife is like the ivy which beautifies the building to which it clings, twining its tendrils more lovingly as time converts the ancient edifice into a ruin.
Samuel Johnson
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He who fails to please in his salutation and address is at once rejected, and never obtains an opportunity of showing his latest excellences or essential qualities.
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The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
Samuel Johnson
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It is to be steadily inculcated, that virtue is the highest proof of understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness.
Samuel Johnson
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Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?
Samuel Johnson
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As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles.
Samuel Johnson
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This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.
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He left the name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale.
Samuel Johnson
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Nothing can be truly great which is not right.
Samuel Johnson