Samuel Johnson

[Nitefly]

Something a bit different!

I don’t know much about this very well regarded chap, but I can say that I have enjoyed reading his quotes so much this evening that I thought I would share some of them. There are dozens, possibly hundreds, in the below link (some being duplicates).

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnson

Some are short and snappy, others are a bit longer…. But all typically wise and sometimes amusing. Here’s some of my favourites. I find the first one particularly profound.

All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with canals. If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of the pick-axe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are levelled, and oceans bounded, by the slender force of human beings.

It is therefore of the utmost importance that those, who have any intention of deviating from the beaten roads of life, and acquiring a reputation superior to names hourly swept away by time among the refuse of fame, should add to their reason, and their spirit, the power of persisting in their purposes; acquire the art of sapping what they cannot batter, and the habit of vanquishing obstinate resistance by obstinate attacks.

To-morrow's action! Can that hoary wisdom,
Borne down with years, still doat upon tomorrow!
That fatal mistress of the young, the lazy,
The coward, and the fool, condemn'd to lose
A useless life in waiting for to-morrow,
To gaze with longing eyes upon to-morrow,
Till interposing death destroys the prospect
Strange! that this general fraud from day to day 
Should fill the world with wretches undetected.
The soldier, labouring through a winter's march,
Still sees to-morrow drest in robes of triumph;
Still to the lover's long-expecting arms
To-morrow brings the visionary bride.
But thou, too old to hear another cheat,
Learn, that the present hour alone is man's.

He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

As it is necessary not to invite robbery by supineness, so it is our duty not to suppress tenderness by suspicion; it is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments; any enlargement of wishes is therefore equally destructive to happiness with the diminution of possession, and he that teaches another to long for what he never shall obtain is no less an enemy to his quiet than if he had robbed him of part of his patrimony.

The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.

What a boss!

Feel free to add you own favourite quotes from Samuel or anyone else

 

[Vulcan]

Feel free to add you own favourite quotes from Samuel or anyone else

Does a favourite image of Samuel Johnson count?

 

[Nitefly]

@Longbow I did deliberately choose a good one

 

[robfosters]

I heard he was a good customer at Mrs Miggins pie shop and enjoyed a Roister or two.

 

[Nitefly]

I heard he was a good customer at Mrs Miggins pie shop and enjoyed a Roister or two.

This is true.

Sausaaaaaaage?!