"Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression; we must always purpose to do more or better than in time past."
Read quote
3 likes
Quote collection
Samuel Johnson quotes (page 57 of 88)
1.7K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"While an author is yet living, we estimate his powers by his worst performance; and when he is dead, we rate him by his best."
Read quote
3 likes
"It may be observed in general that the future is purchased by the present. It is not possible to secure distant or permanent happiness but by the forbearance of some immediate gratification."
Read quote
3 likes
"The hour of reformation is always delayed; every delay gives vice another opportunity of fortifying itself by habit."
Read quote
3 likes
"Reason will by degrees submit to absurdity, as the eye is in time accommodated to darkness."
Read quote
3 likes
"There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets."
Read quote
3 likes
"It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend."
Read quote
3 likes
"Solitude is the surest nurse of all prurient passions, and a girl in the hurry of preparation, or tumult of gaiety, has neither inclination nor leisure to let tender expressions soften or sink into her heart. The ball, the show, are not the dangerous places: no, 'tis the private friend, the kind consoler, the companion of the easy vacant hour, whose compliance with her opinions can flatter her vanity, and whose conversation can sooth, without ever stretching her mind, that is the lover to be feared: he who buzzes in her ear at court, or at the opera, must be contented to buzz in vain."
Read quote
3 likes
"All power of fancy over reason is a degree of madness."
Read quote
3 likes
"Locke, whom there is no reason to suspect of being a favorer of idleness or libertinism, has advanced that whoever hopes to employ any part of his time with efficacy and vigor must allow some of it to pass with trifles."
Read quote
3 likes
"The parallel circumstances and kindred images to which we readily conform our minds are, above all other writings, to be found in the lives of particular persons, and therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography."
Read quote
3 likes
"The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, were exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue."
Read quote
3 likes
"The general remedy of those who are uneasy without knowing the cause is change of place."
Read quote
3 likes
"Club: An assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions."
Read quote
3 likes
"To buried merit rise the tardy bust."
Read quote
3 likes
"See nations slowly wise, and meanly just, to buried merit raise the tardy bust."
Read quote
3 likes
"In sovereignty there are no gradations."
Read quote
3 likes
"Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me, and far from my friends be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Ionia."
Read quote
3 likes
"Laws teach us to know when we commit injury and when we suffer it."
Read quote
3 likes
"Misery and shame are nearly allied."
Read quote
3 likes