454. Superficiality re the women of a harem: "Their affection was not fixed on sense or virtue, and therefore seldom ended but in vexation. Their grief, however, like their joy, was transient: everything floated in their mind unconnected with the past or future, so that one desire easily gave way to another, as a second stone cast into the water effaces and confounds the circles of the first." Johnson: Rasselas [Narrator] Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from Rasselas. Link 911. Superficiality "How great is the number of those in whose minds no source of thought has ever been opened, in whose life no consequence of thought is ever discovered; who have learned nothing upon which they can reflect; who have neither seen nor felt any thing which could leave its traces on the memory; who neither foresee nor desire any change in their condition, and have therefore neither fear, hope, nor design, and yet are supposed to be thinking beings!" Johnson: Idler #24 (September 30, 1758) Link 912. Life; Superficiality "Life is commonly considered as either active or contemplative; but surely this division, how long soever it has been received, is inadequate and fallacious. There are mortals whose life is certainly not active, for they do neither good nor evil; and whose life cannot be properly called contemplative, for they never attend either to the conduct of men or the works of nature, but rise in the morning, look round them till night in careless stupidity, go to bed and sleep, and rise again in the morning." Johnson: Idler #24 (September 30, 1758) Link 913. Life; Superficiality "How frequent soever may be the examples of existence without thought, it is certainly a state not much to be desired. He that lives in torpid insensibility, wants nothing of a carcase but putrefaction. It is the part of every inhabitant of the earth to partake the pains and pleasures of his fellow-beings; and as, in a road through a country desert and uniform, the traveller languishes for want of amusement, so the passage of life will be tedious and irksome to him who does not beguile it by diversified ideas." Johnson: Idler #24 (September 30, 1758) Link 970. Implementation; Moral Instruction; Reading; Superficiality "We see that volumes may be perused, and perused with attention, to little effect; and that maxims of prudence, or principles of virtue, may be treasured in the memory without influencing the conduct. Of the numbers that pass their lives among books, very few read to be made wiser or better, apply any general reproof of vice to themselves, or try their own manners by axioms of justice. They purpose either to consume those hours for which they can find no other amusement, to gain or preserve that respect which learning has always obtained; or to gratify their curiosity with knowledge which, like treasure buried and forgotten, is of no use to others or themselves." Johnson: Rambler #87 (January 15, 1751) Link 971. Implementation; Moral Instruction; Reading; Superficiality "A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists, without any practical regard to morality or religion; he may be learning not to live, but to reason; he may regard only the elegance of style, justness of argument, and accuracy of method; and may enable himself to criticise with judgment, and dispute with subtilty, and while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unreformed." Johnson: Rambler #87 (January 15, 1751) Link 972. Ego Defenses; Superficiality; Truth; Vanity; Virtue "Though truth and virtue are ... frequently defeated by pride, obstinacy, or folly, we are not allowed to desert them; for whoever can furnish arms which they hitherto have not employed, may enable them to gain some hearts which would have resisted any other method of attack. Every man of genius has some art of fixing the attention peculiar to himself, by which, honestly exerted, he may benefit mankind; for the arguments for purity of life fail of their due influence, not because they have been considered and confuted, but because they have been passed over without consideration." Johnson: Rambler #87 (January 15, 1751) Link 1,005. Superficiality; Wisdom "It very commonly happens that speculation has no influence on conduct. Just conclusions and cogent arguments, formed by laborious study and diligent inquiry, are often reposited in the treasuries of memory, as gold in the miser's chest, useless alike to others and to himself. As some are not richer for the extent of their possessions, others are not wiser for the multitude of their ideas." Johnson: Rambler #98 (February 23, 1751) Link 1,010. Appropriateness; Manners; Superficiality "I have, indeed, not found among any part of mankind less real and rational complaisance than among those who have passed their time in paying and receiving visits, in frequenting public entertainments, in studying the exact measures of ceremony, and in watching all the variations of fashionable courtesy. They know, indeed, at what hour they may beat the door of an acquaintance, how many steps they must attend him towards the gate, and what interval should pass before his visit is returned; but seldom extend their care beyond the exterior and unessential parts of civility, nor refuse their own vanity for gratification, however expensive to the quiet of another." Johnson: Rambler #98 (February 23, 1751) Link 1,058. Diversion; Superficiality "You should give a very clear and ample description of the whole set of polite acquirements; a complete history of forms, fashions, frolics, of routs, drums, hurricanes, balls, assemblies, ridottos, masquerades, auctions, plays, operas, puppet-shows, and bear gardens; of all those delights which profitably engage the attention of the most sublime characters, and by which they have brought to such amazing perfection the whole art and mystery of passing day after day, week after week, and year after year, without the heavy assistance of any one thing that formal creatures are pleased to call useful and necessary." Johnson: Rambler #100 — a fictional correspondent named Chariessa Link 1,059. Diversion; Superficiality "Nothing can be clearer than that an everlasting round of diversion, and the more lively and hurrying the better, is the most important end of human life. It is really prodigious, so much as the world is improved, that there should in these days be persons so ignorant and stupid as to think it necessary to mispend their time, and trouble their heads about any thing else than pursuing the present fancy; for what else is living for?" Johnson: Rambler #100 — a fictional correspondent named Chariessa Link 1,060. Superficiality "One cannot discover any one thing [the ancient authors] pretend to teach people, but to be wise and good; acquirements infinitely below the consideration of persons of taste and spirit, who know how to spend their time to so much better purpose." Johnson: Rambler #100 -- a fictional correspondent named Chariessa Link 1,795. Superficiality "The examples and events of history press, indeed, upon the mind with the weight of truth; but when they are reposited in the memory, they are oftener employed for show than use, and rather diversify conversation than regulate life." Johnson: Idler #84 (November 24, 1759) Link