Quote

Present opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages.

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
Opportunity
Neglected
Busied
Mind
Range
Slighted
Good
Opportunities
Ranges
Minds
Attainable
Advantage
Present
Extensive
Upon
Advantages
Future
Intent

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
Attack is the reaction. I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.
Samuel Johnson
Image
I never take a nap after dinner but when I have had a bad night, and then the nap takes me.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.
Samuel Johnson
Image
How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?
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
The drama's laws the drama's patrons give. For we that live to please must please to live.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Who left nothing of authorship untouched, and touched nothing which he did not adorn. [Lat., Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.]
Samuel Johnson
Image
No man tells his opinion so freely as when he imagines it received with implicit veneration.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Men become friends by a community of pleasures.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Example is always more efficacious than precept.
Samuel Johnson
Image
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
Image
If you are idle, be not solitary if you are solitary be not idle.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Few have abilities so much needed by the rest of the world as to be caressed on their own terms and he that will not condescend to recommend himself by external embellishments must submit to the fate of just sentiment meanly expressed, and be ridiculed and forgotten before he is understood.
Samuel Johnson
Image
In my early years I read very hard. It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as much at eighteen as I do now.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Among the calamities of war may be numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Pour forth thy fervors for a healthful mind, Obedient passions, and a will resigned
Samuel Johnson
Image
Sleep undisturbed within this peaceful shrine, Till angels wake thee with a note like thine.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Politeness is fictitious benevolence.
Samuel Johnson