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Idleness and timidity often despair without being overcome, and forbear attempts for fear of being defeated and we may promote the invigoration of faint endeavors, by showing what has already been performed.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
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Timidity
Without
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Overcome
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Performed
Despair
Idleness
Already
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Promote
Often
Defeated
Forbear
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his home town: yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life and as nothing is little to him that feels it with gre
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All envy is proportionate to desire we are uneasy at the attainments of another, according as we think our own happiness would be advanced by the addition of that which he withholds from us.
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I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.
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What is said upon a subject is gathered from an hundred people.
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No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.
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In general those parents have the most reverence who most deserve it for he that lives well cannot be despised.
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Turn on the prudent Ant, thy heedful eyes, Observe her labours, Sluggard, and be wise.
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Every man's affairs, however little, are important to himself.
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The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another.
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Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation.
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Nobody can be taught faster than he can learn.
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The desires of man increase with his acquisitions.
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When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.
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I will take no more physick, not even my opiates for I have prayed that I may render up my soul to God unclouded.
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The complaint, therefore, that all topicks are preoccupied, is nothing more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness, by which some discourage others, and some themselves the mutability of mankind will always furnish writers with new images, and the luxuriance of fancy may always embellish them with new decorations.
Samuel Johnson
To be free it is not enough to beat the system, one must beat the system every day
Samuel Johnson
There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
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Love is only one of many passions.
Samuel Johnson
Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such, We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much Who, born for the Universe, narrowed his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.
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Every government is perpetually degenerating towards corruption, from which it must be rescued at certain periods by the resuscitation of its first principles, and the re-establishment of its original constitution.
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