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The misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated.

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
Small
Vexation
Evil
Proceeds
Men
Repeated
Continually
Crush
Overwhelming
Misery
Single
Vexations

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The process is the reality.
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We never do anything consciously for the last time without sadness of heart.
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Consider what importance to society the chastity of women is. Upon that all the property in the world depends. We hang a thief for stealing a sheep but the unchastity of a woman transfers sheep and farm and all from the right owner.
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Fear naturally quickens the flight of guilt.
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All this [wealth] excludes but one evil, poverty.
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The present time is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.
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Nature never gives everything at once.
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The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.
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Wheresoe'er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new: Endless labor all along, Endless labor to be wrong: Phrase that Time has flung away Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.
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Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties.
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Such is the constitution of Man that labor may be said to be its own re-ward.
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The Church does not superstitiously observe days, merely as days, but as memorials of important facts. Christmas might be kept as well upon one day of the year as another but there should be a stated day for commemorating the birth of our Saviour, because there is danger that what may be done on any day, will be neglected.
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The whole power of cunning is privative to say nothing, and to do nothing , is the utmost of its reach. Yet men, thus narrow by nature and mean by art, are sometimes able to rise by the miscarriages of bravery and the openness of integrity, and, watching failures and snatching opportunities, obtain advantages which belong to higher characters.
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The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.
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Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.
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The king who makes war on his enemies tenderly distresses his subjects most cruelly.
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What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
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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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Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.
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A successful author is equally in danger of the diminution of his fame, whether he continues or ceases to write.
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