Quote

Too much vigor in the beginning of an undertaking often intercepts and prevents the steadiness and perseverance always necessary in the conduct of a complicated scheme.

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
Perseverance
Steadiness
Complicated
Undertaking
Necessary
Undertakings
Beginning
Prevents
Often
Vigor
Much
Scheme
Always
Schemes
Conduct

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You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money to those who work, as the recompense of their labor, than when you give money merely in charity.
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The labor of rising from the ground will be great, ... but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall.
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You raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument.
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Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse.
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It is wonderful what a difference learning makes upon people even in the common intercourse of life, which does not appear to be much connected with it.
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At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.
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My dear friend, clear your mind of can't.
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While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.
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You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe.
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Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy.
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Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.
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It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
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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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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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Liberty is the parent of truth, but truth and decency are sometimes at variance. All men and all propositions are to be treated here as they deserve, and there are many who have no claim either to respect or decency.
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There is ... scarcely any species of writing of which we can tell what is its essence, and what are its constituents every new genius produces some innovation, which, when invented and approved, subverts the rules which the practice of foregoing authors had established.
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It is so far from being natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilised society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together.
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The equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.
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