The collection / 751 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1746 AD

As the mind must govern the hands, so in every society the man of intelligence must direct the man of labor.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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02c. 1746 AD

Occupation alone is happiness.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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03c. 1746 AD

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 by canals. If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of a pickaxe, 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.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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04c. 1746 AD

Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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05c. 1746 AD

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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06c. 1746 AD

Pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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07c. 1746 AD

The business of life is to go forward; he who sees evil in prospect meets it in his way, but he who catches it by retrospection turns back to find it. That which is feared may sometimes be avoided, but that which is regretted to-day may be regretted again to-morrow.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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08c. 1746 AD

Let us be quick to repent of injuries while repentance may not be a barren anguish.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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09c. 1746 AD

Exert your talents and distinguish yourself, and 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 drives 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 / quote

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10c. 1746 AD

Riches exclude only one inconvenience,—that is, poverty.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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11c. 1746 AD

I know not any crime so great that a man could contrive to commit as poisoning the sources of eternal truth.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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12c. 1746 AD

To tell your own secrets is generally folly, but that folly is without guilt; to communicate those with which we are intrusted is always treachery, and treachery for the most part combined with folly.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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13c. 1746 AD

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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14c. 1746 AD

Where necessity ends, curiosity begins; and no sooner are we supplied with everything that nature can command, than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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15c. 1746 AD

Waste cannot be accurately told, though we are sensible how destructive it is. Economy, on the one hand, by which a certain income is made to maintain a man genteelly; and waste, on the other, by which on the same income another man lives shabbily, cannot be defined. It is a very nice thing; as one man wears his coat out much sooner than another, we cannot tell how.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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16c. 1746 AD

I love the acquaintance of young people; because, in the first place, I do not like to think myself growing old. In the next place, young acquaintances must last longest, if they do last; and then, sir, young men have more virtue than old men; they have more generous sentiments in every respect.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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17c. 1746 AD

Grief is a species of idleness, and the necessity of attention to the present, preserves us from being lacerated and devoured by sorrow for the past.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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18c. 1746 AD

All censure of a man's self is oblique praise; it is in order to show how much he can spare.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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19c. 1746 AD

All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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20c. 1746 AD

A patron is one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached the land encumbers him with help.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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21c. 1746 AD

A wicked fellow is the most pious when he takes to it. He'll beat you all in piety.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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22c. 1746 AD

Catch, then, O catch the transient hour; / Improve each moment as it flies; / Life's a short summer—man a flower—/ He dies—alas! how soon he dies!

Samuel Johnson / quote

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23c. 1746 AD

Cautious age suspects the flattering form, and only credits what experience tells.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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24c. 1746 AD

Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other.

Samuel Johnson / quote

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