quote · Legacy record
Solitude is dangerous to reason without being favorable to virtue. Pleasures of some sort are necessary to the intellectual as to the corporal health, and those who resist gayety will be likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appetite, for the solicitations of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief. Remember that the solitary person is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad. The mind stagnates for want of employment, and is extinguished, like a candle in foul air.
Solitude is dangerous to reason without being favorable to virtue. Pleasures of some sort are necessary to the intellectual as to the corporal health, and those who resist gayety will be likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appetite, for the solicitations of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief. Remember that the solitary person is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad. The mind stagnates for want of employment, and is extinguished, like a candle in foul air.
Approximate author period: c. 1746 AD · early modern
Meaning not yet available
An individual explanation has not yet been added. We do not substitute a generic description for an interpretation of these particular words.
Begin with source-checked readings and explanations ↗Attribution & collection notes
- Author or tradition
- Samuel Johnson
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin. - Historical period
- Approximate author period: c. 1746 AD · early modern
author lifetime midpoint (1709–1784)
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- Pearls of Thought (1881) (1881 AD)
Page 244 · printed citation: Johnson · subject: Solitude
A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.