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Expectation improperly indulged in must end in disappointment.

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
Improperly
Indulged
Expectation
Disappointment
Expectations
Ends
Must

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us.
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Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.
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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.
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Friendship may well deserve the sacrifice of pleasure, though not of conscience.
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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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This is my history like all other histories, a narrative of misery.
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Rash oaths, whether kept or broken, frequently produce guilt.
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Never believe extraordinary characters which you hear of people. Depend upon it, they are exaggerated. You do not see one man shoot a great deal higher than another.
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Distance either of time or place is sufficient to reconcile weak minds to wonderful relations.
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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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Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotsman to draw the trigger at his death.
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If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.
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Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such, We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much Who, born for the Universe, narrowed his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.
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We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure.
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Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.
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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.
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There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
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I have adopted the Roman sentiment, that it is more honorable to save a citizen than to kill an enemy.
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Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
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It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.
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