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We suffer equal pain from the pertinacious adhesion of unwelcome images, as from the evanescence of those which are pleasing and useful.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Unwelcome
Pleasing
Images
Useful
Suffer
Equal
Suffering
Adhesion
Pain
Evanescence
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.
Samuel Johnson
Every other enjoyment malice may destroy every other panegyric envy may withhold but no human power can deprive the boaster of his own encomiums.
Samuel Johnson
Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his home town: yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life and as nothing is little to him that feels it with gre
Samuel Johnson
..to write and to live are very different. Many who praise virtue, do no more than praise it.
Samuel Johnson
You think I love flattery (says Dr. Johnson), and so I do but a little too much always disgusts me: that fellow Richardson, on the contrary, could not be contented to sail quietly down the stream of reputation, without longing to taste the froth from every stroke of the oar.
Samuel Johnson
Gaiety is to good-humor as animal perfumes to vegetable fragrance. The one overpowers weak spirits, the other recreates and revives them. Gaiety seldom fails to give some pain good-humor boasts no faculties which every one does not believe in his own power, and pleases principally by not offending.
Samuel Johnson
Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us.
Samuel Johnson
Pour forth thy fervors for a healthful mind, Obedient passions, and a will resigned
Samuel Johnson
The misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated.
Samuel Johnson
What ever the motive for the insult, it is always best to overlook it for folly doesn't deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect.
Samuel Johnson
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.
Samuel Johnson
Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent.
Samuel Johnson
Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.
Samuel Johnson
Many leave the labours of half their life to their executors and to chance, because they will not send them abroad unfinished, and are unable to finish them, having prescribed to themselves such a degree of exactness as human diligence can scarcely ontain.
Samuel Johnson
The mere power of saving what is already in our hands must be of easy acquisition to every mind and as the example of Lord Bacon may show that the highest intellect cannot safely neglect it, a thousand instances every day prove that the humblest may practise it with success.
Samuel Johnson
Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is expected is already destroyed.
Samuel Johnson
None but a fool worries about things he cannot influence.
Samuel Johnson
I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.
Samuel Johnson
men do not suspect faults which they do not commit
Samuel Johnson
Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order. - John V. Lindsay No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.
Samuel Johnson
