Quote

In the condition of men, it frequently happens that grief and anxiety lie hid under the golden robes of prosperity and the gloom of calamity is cheered by secret radiations of hope and comfort as in the works of nature, the bog is sometimes covered with flowers, and the mine concealed in the barren crags.

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
Lying
Grief
Frequently
Bogs
Hope
Mines
Covered
Cheered
Nature
Mine
Flowers
Radiation
Happens
Flower
Condition
Robes
Sometimes
Comfort
Appearance
Gloom
Men
Works
Prosperity
Barren
Conditions
Golden
Calamity
Secret
Anxiety
Concealed
Crags

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Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather political than religious.
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He who praises everybody, praises nobody.
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A man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice.
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But the distant hope of being one day useful or eminent ought not to mislead us too far from that study which is equally requisite to the great and mean, to the celebrated and obscure the art of moderating the desires, of repressing the appetites and of conciliating or retaining the favour of mankind.
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About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right.
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Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.
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Sir, it is wrong to stir up law-suits but when once it is certain that a law-suit is to go on, there is nothing wrong in a lawyer's endeavouring that he shall have the benefit, rather than another.
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Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves.
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The truly strong and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.
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Cautious age suspects the flattering form, and only credits what experience tells.
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Order is a lovely nymph, the child of Beauty and Wisdom her attendants are Comfort, Neatness, and Activity her abode is the valley of happiness: she is always to be found when sought for, and never appears so lovely as when contrasted with her opponent, Disorder.
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If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it to go to the beginning. He may perhaps not feel again the inclination.
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Laws teach us to know when we commit injury and when we suffer it.
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No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.
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Those who have any intention of deviating from the beaten roads of life, and acquiring a reputation superior to names hourly swept away by time among the refuse of fame, should add to their reason and their spirit the power of persisting in their pur
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He that would travel for the entertainment of others should remember that the great object of remark is human life.
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To have the management of the mind is a great art, and it may be attained in a considerable degree by experience and habitual exercise.
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Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage.
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Gaiety is to good-humor as animal perfumes to vegetable fragrance. The one overpowers weak spirits, the other recreates and revives them. Gaiety seldom fails to give some pain good-humor boasts no faculties which every one does not believe in his own power, and pleases principally by not offending.
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Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.
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