23. Action/Inaction; Learning
"Mankind have a great aversion to
intellectual labor; but even
supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be
content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to
acquire it."
Boswell: Life
Link
71. Career Action/Inaction; Choices;
Life
"Life is not long, and too much of it should not be spent in idle
deliberation how it shall be spent: deliberation, which those
who begin it by prudence, and continue it with subtilty, must,
after long expence of thought, conclude by chance. To prefer one
future mode of life to another, upon just reasons, requires
faculties which it has not pleased our Creator to give us."
Boswell: Life
Link
86. Action/Inaction; Familiarity
"Mankind have a strong attachment to the habitations to which
they have been accustomed. You see the inhabitants of Norway do
not with one consent quit it, and go to some part of America,
where there is a mild climate, and where they may have the same
produce from land, with the tenth part of the labour. No, Sir;
their affection for their old dwellings, and the terrour of a
general change, keep them at home. Thus, we see many of the
finest spots in the world thinly inhabited, and many rugged spots
well inhabited."
Boswell: Life
Link
203. Action/Inaction; Writing
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."
Boswell: Life
Link
219. Action/Inaction; Charity
"No, Sir; to act from pure benevolence is not possible for
finite beings. Human benevolence is mingled with vanity,
interest, or some other motive."
Boswell: Life
Link
340. Action/Inaction; Children; Sibling
Rivalry
"I would rather have the rod to be the
general terror to all, to
make them learn, than tell a child, if you do thus or thus, you
will be more esteemed than your brothers or sisters. The rod
produces an effect which terminates itself. A child is afraid of
being whipped, and gets his task, and there's an end on't;
whereas, by exciting emulation, and comparisons of superiority,
you lay the foundation of lasting mischief; you make brothers
and sisters hate each other."
Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Link
353. Action/Inaction; Death
"If one was to think constantly of death, the business of life
would stand still."
Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Link
432. Action/Inaction; Caution
"Nothing ... will ever be attempted, if all possible objections
must be first overcome."
Johnson: Rasselas [The Artist]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from
Rasselas.
Link
479. Action/Inaction; Ambition;
Discontent
"It [the pyramids] seems to have been erected only in
compliance with that hunger of imagination which preys
incessantly upon life, and must be always appeased by some
employment. Those who have already all that they can enjoy must
enlarge their desires. He that has built for use till use is
supplied, must begin to build for vanity, and extend his plan to
the utmost power of human performance, that he may not be soon
reduced to form another wish."
Johnson: Rasselas [Imlac]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from
Rasselas.
Link
480. Action/Inaction; Ambition;
Vanity
"I consider this mighty structure [the pyramid] as a
monument to the insufficiency of human enjoyments. A king, whose
power is unlimited, and whose treasures surmount all real and
imaginary wants, is compelled to solace, by the erection of a
Pyramid, the satiety of dominion and tastelessness of pleasures,
and to amuse the tediousness of declining life, by seeing
thousands laboring without end, and one stone, for no purpose,
laid upon another. Whoever thou art that, not content with a
moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence,
and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of
novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and
confess thy folly."
Johnson: Rasselas [Imlac]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from
Rasselas.
Link
481. Action/Inaction; Government;
Impotence; Negligence;
Resignation
"Governors being accustomed to hear of more crimes than they can
punish, and more wrongs than they can redress, set themselves at
ease by indiscriminate negligence, and presently forget the
request when they lose sight of the petitioner."
Johnson: Rasselas [Narrator]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from
Rasselas.
Link
725. Action/Inaction; Pain
"The mind is seldom quickened to very vigorous operations but by
pain, or the dread of pain."
Johnson: Idler #18 (August 12, 1758)
Link
936. Action/Inaction
"Idleness and timidity often despair without being overcome, and
forbear attempts for fear of being defeated; and we may promote
the invigoration of faint endeavours, by showing what has already
been performed."
Johnson: Rambler #83 (January 1, 1751)
Link
1,072. Action/Inaction; Effort; Fear;
Novelty
"There is no snare more dangerous to
busy and excursive minds
than the cobwebs of petty inquisitiveness, which entangle them in
trivial employments and minute studies, and detain them in a
middle state, between the tediousness of total inactivity and the
fatigue of laborious efforts, enchant them at once with ease and
novelty, and vitiate them with the luxury of learning. The
necessity of doing something and the fear of undertaking much
sink the historian to a genealogist, the philosopher to a
journalist of the weather, and the mathematician to a constructor
of dials."
Johnson: Rambler #103 (March 12, 1751)
Link
1,381. Action/Inaction; Greed
"Many there are who openly and almost professedly regulate all
their conduct by their love of money: who have no reason for
action or forbearance, for compliance or refusal, than that they
hope to gain more by one than by the other. These are indeed the
meanest and cruelest of human beings, a race with whom, as
with some pestiferous animals, the whole creation seems to be at
war; but who, however detested or scorned, long continue to add
heap upon heap, and when they have reduced one to beggary, are
still permitted to fasten on another."
Johnson: Rambler #175 (November 19, 1751)
Link
1,400. Action/Inaction; Economy;
Poverty; Wealth
"The whole world is put in motion by the wish for riches and
dread of poverty. Who, then, would not imagine that such conduct
as will inevitably destroy what all are thus labouring to acquire
must generally be avoided? That he who spends more than he
receives must in time become indigent cannot be doubted; but how
evident soever this consequence may appear, the spendthrift moves
in the whirl of pleasure with too much rapidity to keep it before
his eyes, and, in the intoxication of gaiety, grows every day
poorer without any such sense of approaching ruin as is
sufficient to wake him into caution."
Johnson: Rambler #178 (November 30, 1751)
Link
1,402. Action/Inaction; Choice
"Great numbers who quarrel with their condition have wanted not
the power but the will to obtain a better state. They have never
contemplated the difference between good and evil sufficiently to
quicken aversion or invigorate desire; they have indulged a
drowsy thoughtlessness or giddy lenity; have committed the
balance of choice to the management of caprice; and when they
have long accustomed themselves to receive all that chance
offered them, without examination, lament at last that they find
themselves deceived."
Johnson: Rambler #178 (November 30, 1751)
Link
1,447. Action and Inaction;
Praise
"Praise is so pleasing to the mind of man that it is the original
of almost all of our actions."
Johnson: Rambler #193 (January 21, 1752)
Link
