Quote

Terrestrial happiness is of short duration. The brightness of the flame is wasting its fuel the fragrant flower is passing away in its own odors.

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
Duration
Flower
Brightness
Short
Wasting
Happiness
Flame
Away
Passings
Terrestrial
Flames
Fragrant
Fuel
Odor
Passing

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
Little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Most men are more willing to indulge in easy vices than to practise laborious virtues.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. Every advance into knowledge opens new prospects, and produces new incitements to farther progress.
Samuel Johnson
Image
No man should attempt to teach others what he has never learned himself
Samuel Johnson
Image
Claret is the liquor for boys port for men but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.
Samuel Johnson
Image
One of the most pernicious effects of haste is obscurity.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Let me rejoice in the light which Thou hast imparted let me serve Thee with active zeal, humbled confidence, and wait with patient expectation for the time in which the soul which Thou receivest shall be satisfied with knowledge.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits the other recreates and revives them.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Jesting, often, only proves a want of intellect.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The best part of every author is in general to be found in his book, I assure you.
Samuel Johnson
Image
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.
Samuel Johnson
Image
To do nothing is in everyone's power.
Samuel Johnson
Image
He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel.
Samuel Johnson
Image
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
Samuel Johnson
Image
You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning.
Samuel Johnson
Image
It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous.
Samuel Johnson
Image
A newswriter is a man without virtue, who lies at home for his own profit.
Samuel Johnson