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Of the present state, whatever it be, we feel and are forced to confess the misery yet when the same state is again at a distance, imagination paints it as desirable.
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
Feel
Misery
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Whatever
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Forced
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
The true effect of genuine politeness seems to be rather ease than pleasure.
Samuel Johnson
Political liberty is only good insofar as it produces private liberty.
Samuel Johnson
If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim.
Samuel Johnson
We are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure.
Samuel Johnson
The mathematicians are well acquainted with the difference between pure science, which has only to do with ideas, and the application of its laws to the use of life, in which they are constrained to submit to the imperfections of matter and the influence of accidents.
Samuel Johnson
Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it
Samuel Johnson
A married man has many cares, but a bachelor no pleasures.
Samuel Johnson
Critics, like the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest.
Samuel Johnson
No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius.
Samuel Johnson
Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.
Samuel Johnson
He that would travel for the entertainment of others should remember that the great object of remark is human life.
Samuel Johnson
Remember that nothing will supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity long continued will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible.
Samuel Johnson
I wish there were some cure, like the lover's leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession.
Samuel Johnson
The expense is damnable, the position is ridiculous, and the pleasure fleeting.
Samuel Johnson
Friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness and its permanence from the other.
Samuel Johnson
The belief of immortality is impressed upon all men, and all men act under an impression of it, however they may talk, and though, perhaps, they may be scarcely sensible of it.
Samuel Johnson
Every reader should remember the diffidence of Socrates, and repair by his candour the injuries of time: he should impute the seeming defects of his author to some chasm of intelligence, and suppose that the sense which is now weak was once forcible
Samuel Johnson
When a man feel the reprehension of a friend seconded by his own heart, he is easily heated into resentment.
Samuel Johnson
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life for there is in London all that life can afford.
Samuel Johnson
Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy, affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly the one completes a villain, the other only finishes a fop.
Samuel Johnson
