We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
Author
Samuel Johnson
112 quotations
About Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson, often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer and polymath who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. The work for which he is best known is his 42,733-entry Dictionary of the English Language (1755). For this and other contributions in and to the English language, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has called him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English …
Read on Wikipedia → Find books by Samuel JohnsonWhat we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the …
Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.
To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.
There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern... No, Sir there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as…
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.
There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.
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We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.
Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.
Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife he is always proud of himself as the source of it.
Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficu…
He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.
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.
Small debts are like small shot they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon of loud noise, but little danger.
He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.
There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.
All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.
No man was ever great by imitation.
I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.
A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.
Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.
Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.