546. Appearance; Fashion
"I have found by long experience, that
there are few enterprises
so hopeless as contests with the fashion, in which the opponents
are not only made confident by their numbers and strong by their
union, but are hardened by contempt of their antagonist, whom
they always look upon as a wretch of low notions, contracted
views, mean conversation, and narrow fortune, who envies the
elevations which he cannot reach, who would gladly imbitter the
happiness which his inelegance or indigence deny him to partake,
and who has no other end in his advice than to revenge his own
mortification by hindering those whom their birth and taste have
set above him, from the enjoyment of their superiority, and
bringing them down to a level with himself."
Johnson: Rambler #15 (May 8, 1750)
Link
728. Appearances; Diversion; Fashion;
Pleasure; Vanity
"Whatever diversion is costly will be frequented by those who
desire to be thought rich; and whatever has, by any accident,
become fashionable, easily continues its reputation, because
every one is ashamed of not partaking it."
Johnson: Idler #18 (August 12, 1758)
Link
956. Fashion
"Men may be convinced, but they cannot be pleased against their
will. But though taste is obstinate, it is very variable, and
time often prevails when arguments have failed."
Johnson: Congreve (Lives of the Poets)
Link
1,086. Fashion; Mediocrity; Obscurity;
Op-Ed; Writing
"Of the innumerable authors whose performances are thus treasured
up in magnificent obscurity [in a library], most are
forgotten, because they never deserved to be remembered, and owed
the honours which they once obtained, not to judgment or to
genius, to labour or to art, but to the prejudice of faction, the
strategems of intrigue, or the servility of adulation. Nothing
is more common than to find men, whose works are now totally
neglected, mentioned with praises by their contemporaries as the
oracles of their age, and the legislators of science."
Johnson: Rambler #106 (March 23, 1751)
Link
1,088. Fashion; Mediocrity; Op-Ed;
Popularity; Reading; Writing
"Among those whose reputation is exhausted in a short time by its
own luxuriance are the writers who take advantage of present
incidents or characters which strongly interest the passions, and
engage universal attention. It is not difficult to obtain
readers, when we discuss a question which every one is desirous
to understand, which is debated in every assembly, and has
divided the nation into parties; or when we display the faults
or virtues of him whose public conduct has made almost every man
his enemy or his friend."
Johnson: Rambler #106 (March 23, 1751)
Link
1,346. Fashion
"Words which convey ideas of dignity in one age are banished from
elegant writing or conversation in another, because they are in
time debased by vulgar mouths, and can be no longer heard without
the involuntary recollections of unpleasant images."
Johnson: Rambler #168 (October 26, 1751)
Link
1,653. Culture; Fashion
"The manners of the world are not a regular system, planned by
philosophers upon settled principles, in which every cause has a
congruous effect, and one part has a just reference to another.
Of the fashions prevalent in every country, a few have arisen,
perhaps, from particular temperatures of the climate; a few more
from the constitution of the government; but the greater part
have grown up by chance; been started by caprice, been contrived
by affectation, or borrowed without any just motives of choice
from other countries."
Johnson: Adventurer #131 (February 5, 1754)
Link
1,654. Ego-Defenses; Fashion
"Much the greater part of those who pretend to laugh at foppery
and formality, secretly wish to have possessed those
qualifications which they pretend to despise; and because they
find it difficult to wash away the tincture which they have so
deeply imbibed, endeavour to harden themselves in a sullen
approbation of their own colour. Neutrality is a state, into
which the busy passions of man cannot easily subside; and he who
is in danger of the pangs of envy, is generally forced to
recreate his imagination with an effort of comfort."
Johnson: Adventurer #131 (February 5, 1754)
Link
