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Irresolution and mutability are often the faults of men whose views are wide, and whose imagination is vigorous and excursive.

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
Faults
Wide
Whose
Views
Imagination
Often
Irresolution
Men
Mutability
Vigorous

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The maxim of Cleobulus, Mediocrity is best, has been long considered a universal principle, extending through the whole compass of life and nature. The experience of every age seems to have given it new confirmation, and to show that nothing, however specious or alluring, is pursued with propriety or enjoyed with safety beyond certain limits.
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Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new.
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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.
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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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At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.
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The present time is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.
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Whatever advantage we snatch beyond a certain portion allotted us by at nature, is like money spent before it is due, which, at the time of regular payment, will be missed and regretted.
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Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use.
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If you are idle, be not solitary if you are solitary be not idle.
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He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
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These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes.
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Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle for the calamities of life, like the necessities of Nature, are calls to labor and diligence.
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Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness, which nature has kindly placed within our reach.
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It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.
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As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles.
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Every man's affairs, however little, are important to himself.
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Still we love The evil we do, until we suffer it.
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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.
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Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
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Learn that the present hour alone is man's.
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