Quote

To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude it is not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

Samuel Johnson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Live
Mankind
Retreat
Celibacy
Without
Feeling
Pleasures
Afflicted
Many
Pleasure
Sympathy
Felicity
State
Fortunate
Tasting
Pain
Pity
Exclusion
Feelings
Solitude
Gloomy
Others
Exciting
Adding
States
Marriage
Pains
Balm

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The arguments for purity of life fail of their due influence, not because they have been considered and confuted, but because they have been passed over without consideration.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The botanist looks upon the astronomer as a being unworthy of his regard and he that is glowing great and happy by electrifying a bottle wonders how the world can be engaged by trifling prattle about war and peace.
Samuel Johnson
Image
None are happy but by anticipation of change.
Samuel Johnson
Image
I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
Samuel Johnson
Image
No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance, or to extinguish the desire of fond endearments and tender officiousness and, therefore, no one should think it unnecessary to learn those arts by which friendship may be gained.
Samuel Johnson
Image
There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.
Samuel Johnson
Image
If we will have the kindness of others, we must endure their follies.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Was there ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's Progress?
Samuel Johnson
Image
Attack is the reaction. I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The authors that in any nation last from age to age are very few, because there are very few that have any other claim to notice than that they catch hold on present curiosity, and gratify some accidental desire, or produce some temporary conveniency.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The habit of looking on the bright side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a year.
Samuel Johnson
Image
You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Shakespeare never had more than 6 lines together without a fault.
Samuel Johnson
Image
How small of all that human hearts endure/That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.
Samuel Johnson
Image
When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.
Samuel Johnson
Image
I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.
Samuel Johnson
Image
There are indeed, in the present corruption of mankind, many incitements to forsake truth: the need of palliating our own faults and the convenience of imposing on the ignorance or credulity of others so frequently occur so many immediate evils are
Samuel Johnson
Image
He left the name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale.
Samuel Johnson