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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

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

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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There is no idleness, by which we are so easily seduced, as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business, and by making the loiterer imagine that he has something to do which must not be neglected, keeps him in perpetual agitation, and hurries him rapidly from place to place.
Samuel Johnson
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Wise married women don't trouble themselves about infidelity in their husbands.
Samuel Johnson
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Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression we must always purpose to do more or better than in time past.
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Since life itself is uncertain, nothing which has life for its basis can boast much stability.
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The mental disease of the present generation is impatience of study, contempt of the great masters of ancient wisdom, and a disposition to rely wholly upon unassisted genius and natural sagacity.
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Your aspirations are your possibilities.
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To love their country has been considered as virtue in men, whose love could not be otherwise than blind, because their preference was made without, a comparison but it has never been my fortune to find, either in ancient or modern writers, any honourable mention of those, who have, with equal blindness, hated their country.
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The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy their real faults are immediately detected and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an individual weight of calumny will be super-added.
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Riches seldom make their owners rich.
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Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.
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It is better a man should be abused than forgotten.
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It is man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.
Samuel Johnson
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In misery's darkest cavern known, His useful care was ever nigh Where hopeless anguish pour'd his groan, And lonely want retir'd to die.
Samuel Johnson
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This is my history like all other histories, a narrative of misery.
Samuel Johnson
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A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.
Samuel Johnson
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No man sympathizes with the sorrows of vanity.
Samuel Johnson
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The world is seldom what it seems to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.
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The future is purchased by the present.
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Timidity is a disease of the mind, obstinate and fatal for a man once persuaded that any impediment is insuperable has given it, with respect to himself, that strength and weight which it had not before.
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We ought not to raise expectations which it is not in our power to satisfy.-It is more pleasing to see smoke brightening into flame, than flame sinking into smoke.
Samuel Johnson