13. Death; Disease; Futurity; Mourning;
War
I should be sorry to think that what engrosses the attention of
my friend, 
should have no part of mine. Your mind
is now full of
the fate of Dury; but his fate is past, and nothing remains but
to try what reflection will suggest to mitigate the terrours of a
violent death, which is more formidable at first glance, than on
a nearer and more steady view. A violent death is never very
painful; the only danger is, lest it should be unprovided. But
if a man can be supposed to make no provision for death in war,
what can be the state which would have awakened him to the care
of futurity? When would that man have prepared himself to die,
who went to seek death without preparation? What then can be the
reason why we lament more him that dies of a wound, than him that
dies of a fever? A man that languishes with disease, ends his
life with more pain, but with less virtue: he leaves no example
to his friends, nor bequeaths any honour to his descendants. The
only reason why we lament a Soldier's death, is, that we think he
might have lived longer; yet this cause of grief is common to
many other kinds of death, which are not so passionately
bewailed. The truth is, that every death is violent which is the
effect of accident; every death which is not gradually brought
on by the miseries of age, or when life is extinguished for any
other reason than that it is burnt out. He that dies before
sixty, of a cold or consumption, dies, in reality, by a violent
death; yet his death is borne with patience, only because the
cause of his untimely end is silent and invisible. Let us
endeavor to see things as they are, and then enquire whether we
ought to complain. Whether to see life as it is, will give us
much consolation, I know not; but the consolation which is drawn
from truth if any there be, is solid and durable: that which may
be derived from errour, must be, like its original, fallacious
and fugitive.
Johnson: Letter to Bennet Langton
Link
320. After-life; Futurity;
Mortality
"You know I never thought confidence with respect to futurity any
part of the character of a brave, a wise, or a good man. Bravery
has no place where it can avail nothing, Wisdom impresses
strongly the consciousness of those faults, of which it is itself
perhaps an aggravation; and Goodness always wishing to be
better, and imputing every deficience to criminal negligence, and
every fault to voluntary corruption, never dares to suppose the
conditions of forgiveness fulfilled, not what is wanting in the
virtue supplied by Penitence.
This is the state of the best; but what must be the condition of
him whose heart will not suffer him to rank himself among the
best, or among the good? Such must be his dread of the
approaching trial, as will leave him little attention to the
opinion of those whom he is leaving forever; and the serenity
that is not felt, it can be of no virtue to feign."
Johnson: Letter to Hester Thrale [Piozzi]
Link
416. After-life; Futurity
"They who look but little into futurity, have, perhaps, the
quickest sensation of the present."
Johnson: Taxation No Tyranny
Link
494. Diversion; Fancy; Futurity; Solitude
"He who has nothing external that can divert him must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not; for who is pleased with what he is? He then expiates in boundless futurity, and culls from all imaginable conditions that which for the present moment he should most desire, amuses his desires with impossible enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable dominion. The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all combination, and riots in delights which nature and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow.
"In time some particular train of ideas fixes the attention; all other intellectual gratifications are rejected; the mind, in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favorite conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth. By degrees the reign of fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in time despotic. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or of anguish."
Johnson: Rasselas [Imlac]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from
Rasselas.
Link
515. After-Life; Contemplation; Futurity; Piety; Religion; Retreat; Temptation
...it appears, upon a philosophical estimate, that, supposing the mind, at any certain time, in an equipoise between the pleasures of this life and the hopes of futurity, present objects falling more frequently into the scale would in time preponderate, and that our regard for an invisible state would grow every moment weaker, till at last it would lose all its activity, and become absolutely without effect.
To prevent this dreadful event, the balance is put into our own hands, and we have power to transfer the weight to either side. The motives to a life of holiness are infinite, not less than the favour or anger of Omnipotence, not less than eternity of happiness or misery. But these can only influence our conduct as they gain our attention, which the business or diversions of the world are always calling off by contrary attractions.
The great art of piety, and the end for which all the arts of religion seem to be instituted, is the perpetual renovation of the motives to virtue, by a voluntary employment of our mind in the contemplation of its excellence, its importance, and its necessity, which, in proportion as they are more frequently and more willingly resolved, gain a more forcible and permanent influence, till in time they become the reigning ideas, the standing principles of action, and the test by which every thing proposed to the judgment is rejected or approved.
To facilitate this change of our affections it is necessary that we weaken the temptations of the world, by retiring at certain seasons from it; for its influence arising only from its presence is much lessened when it becomes the object of solitary meditation. A constant residence amidst noise and pleasure inevitably obliterates the impressions of piety, and a frequent abstraction of ourselves into a state where this life, like the next, operates only upon the reason, will reinstate religion in its just authority, even without those irradiations from above, the hope of which I have no intention to withdraw from the sincere and the diligent.
Johnson: Rambler #7 (April 10, 1750)
Link
582. Futurity; Over-Anticipation
"An idle and thoughtless resignation to chance, without any
struggle against calamity or endeavour after advantage, is indeed
below the dignity of a reasonable being, in whose power
Providence has put a great part even of his present happiness;
but it shows an equal ignorance of our proper sphere, to harass
our thoughts with conjectures about things not yet in being. How
can we regulate events, of which we yet know not whether they
will ever happen? And why should we think, with painful anxiety,
about that on which our thoughts can have no influence?"
Johnson: Rambler #29 (June 26, 1750)
Link
609. Contemplation; Imagination;
Futurity; Memory
"It is ... much more common for the solitary and thoughtful
to amuse themselves with schemes of the future, than reviews of
the past. For the future is pliant and ductile, and will be
easily moulded by a strong fancy into any form. But the images
which memory presents are of a stubborn and untractable nature,
the objects of remembrance have already existed, and left their
signature behind them impressed upon the mind, so as to defy all
attempts of erasure or of change.
"As the satisfactions, therefore, arising from memory are
less arbitrary, they are more solid, and are, indeed, the only
joys which we can call our own."
Johnson: Rambler #41 (August 7, 1750)
Link
876. Futurity; Mortality
"It is, indeed, apparent, from the constitution of the world,
that there must be a time for other thoughts; and a perpetual
meditation upon the last hour, however it may become the solitude
of a monastery, is inconsistent with many duties of common life.
But surely the remembrance of death ought to predominate in our
minds, as an habitual and settled principle, always operating,
though not always perceived; and our attention should seldom
wander so far from our own condition as not to be recalled and
fixed by the sight of an event which must soon, we know not how
soon, happen likewise to ourselves, and of which, though we
cannot appoint the time, we may secure the consequence."
Johnson: Rambler #78 (December 15, 1750)
Link
877. Futurity; Mortality;
Narrowness
"Every instance of death may justly awaken our fears and quicken
our vigilance; but its frequency so much weakens its effect that
we are seldom alarmed unless some close connexion is broken,
some scheme frustrated, or some hope defeated. Many, therefore,
seem to pass on from youth to decrepitude without any reflection
on the end of life, because they are wholly involved within
themselves, and look on others only as inhabitants of the common
earth, without any expectation of receiving good, or intention of
bestowing it."
Johnson: Rambler #78 (December 15, 1750)
Link
881. Futurity; Old Age
"Every funeral may justly be considered as a summons to prepare
for that state into which it shows us that we must some time
enter; and the summons is more loud and piercing as the event
of which it warns us is at less distance. To neglect at any time
preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege; but to
omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack."
Johnson: Rambler #78 (December 15, 1750)
Link
882. Futurity
"Since business and gaiety are always drawing our attention away
from a future state, some admonition is frequently necessary to
recall it to our minds, and what can more properly renew
the impression than the examples of mortality which every day
supplies? The great incentive to virtue is the reflection that
we must die; it will, therefore, be useful to accustom ourselves,
whenever we see a funeral, to consider how soon we may be added
to the number of those whose probation is past, and whose
happiness or misery shall endure forever."
Johnson: Rambler #78 (December 15, 1750)
Link
908. Futurity
"It is unworthy of a reasonable being to spend any of the little
time allotted us, without some tendency, either direct or
oblique, to the end of our existence."
Johnson: Rambler #80 (December 22, 1750)
Link
909. Futurity
"Though every moment cannot be laid out on the formal and regular
improvement of our knowledge, or in the stated practice of a
moral or religious duty, yet none should be so spent as to
exclude wisdom or virtue, or pass without possibility of
qualifying as more or less for the better employment of those
which are to come."
Johnson: Rambler #80 (December 22, 1750)
Link
1,306. Foresight; Futurity
"It is not easy for a man of tender and scrupulous goodness to
overlook the immediate effect of his own actions, by turning his
eyes upon remoter consequences, and to do that which must give
present pain, for the sake of obviating evil yet unfelt, or
securing advantage in time to come. What is distant is in itself
obscure, and, when we have no wish to see it, easily escapes our
notice, or takes such a form as desire or imagination bestows
upon it."
Johnson: Rambler #160 (September 28, 1751)
Link
1,636. Adversity; Futurity
"Nothing confers so much ability to resist the temptations that
perpetually surround us, as an habitual consideration of the
shortness of life, and the uncertainty of those pleasures that
solicit our pursuit; and this consideration can be inculcated
only by affliction. 'O Death! how bitter is the remembrance of
thee, to a man that lives at ease in his possessions!' If our
present state were one continued succession of delights, or one
uniform flow of calmness and tranquility, we should never
willingly think upon its end; death would then surely
surprise us as 'a thief in the night;' and our task of duty
would remain unfinished, till 'the night came when no man can
work.'"
Johnson: Adventurer #120 (December 29, 1753)
Link
1,746. Futurity; Spring
"A blighted spring makes for a barren year, and ... the vernal
flowers are only intended by nature as preparatives to autumnal
fruits."
Johnson: Rambler #5 (April 3, 1750)
Link
1,828. Futurity
"None would fix their attention upon the future, but that they
were discontented with the present. If the senses were
feasted with perpetual pleasure, they would always keep the
mind in subjection."
Johnson: Idler #89 (December 29, 1759)
Link
