17. Diversion; Life
"Surely life, if it be not long, is tedious, since we are forced
to call in the assistance of so many trifles to rid us of our
time, of that time which never can return."
Johnson: Letter to Baretti (June 10, 1761)
Link
71. Career 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
145. Charity; Life; Poverty
What signifies, says some one, giving halfpence to beggars? they
only lay it out in gin or tobacco. "And why should they be
denied such sweeteners of their existence (says Johnson)? it is
surely very savage to refuse them every possible avenue to
pleasure, reckoned too coarse for our own acceptance. Life is a
pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding; yet
for the poor we delight in stripping it still barer, and are not
ashamed to shew even visible displeasure, if ever the bitter
taste is taken from their mouths."
Piozzi: Anecdotes
Link
222. Happiness; Life
"That man is never happy for the present is so true, that all his
relief from unhappiness is only forgetting himself for a little
while. Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment
to enjoyment."
Boswell: Life
Link
242. Life; Wealth
"Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate
kindness is a valuable part of the business of life."
Boswell: Life
Link
362. Life
"But it must be remembered, that life consists not of a series of
illustrious actions, or elegant enjoyments; the greater part of
our time passes in compliance with necessities, in the
performance of daily duties, in the removal of small
inconveniencies, in the procurement of petty pleasures; and we
are well or ill at ease, as the main stream of life glides on
smoothly, or is ruffled by small obstacles and frequent
interruption. The true state of every nation is the state of
common life."
Johnson: Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
Link
374. Life; Misery
"Misery is caused for the most part, not by a heavy crush of
disaster, but by the corrosion of less visible evils, which
canker enjoyment, and undermine security. The visit of an
invader is necessarily rare, but domestic animosities allow no
cessation."
Johnson: Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
Link
394. History; Life
"It seems to be almost the universal errour of historians to
suppose it politically, as it is physically true, that every
effect has a proportionate cause. In the inanimate action of
matter upon matter, the motion produced can be but equal to the
force of the moving power; but the operations of life, whether
private or publick, admit no such laws. The caprices of
voluntary agents laugh at calculation. It is not always that
there is a strong reason for a great event. Obstinacy and
flexibility, malignity and kindness, give place, alternately, to
each other; and the reason of these vicissitudes, however
important may be the consequences, often escapes the mind in
which the change is made."
Johnson: Thoughts on the Late
Transactions Respecting Falkland's Islands
Link
403. Life
"To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good
that is within our reach, is the great art of life. Many wants
are suffered, which might once have been supplied; and much time
is lost in regretting the time which had been lost before."
Johnson: The Patriot
Link
439. Humanity; Life
"The Europeans ... are less unhappy than we, but they are not
happy. Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be
endured, and little to be enjoyed."
Johnson: Rasselas [Imlac]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from
Rasselas.
Link
465. Life
"On necessary and inevitable evils, which overwhelm kingdoms at
once, all disputation is vain; when they happen, they must be
endured. But it is evident that these bursts of universal
distress are more dreaded than felt; thousands and ten thousands
flourish in youth and wither in age, without the knowledge of any
other than domestic evils, and share the same pleasures and
vexations, whether their kings are mild or cruel, whether the
armies of their country pursue their enemies or retreat before
them. While courts are disturbed with intestine competitions,
and ambassadors are negotiating in foreign countries, the smith
still plies his anvil, and the husband man drives his plow
forward; the necessaries of life are required and obtained; and
the successive business of the seasons continues to make its
wonted revolutions."
Johnson: Rasselas [Rasselas]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from
Rasselas.
Link
485. Choice; Life
"Do not suffer life to stagnate; it will grow muddy for want of
motion: commit yourself again to the current of the world."
Johnson: Rasselas [Imlac]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from
Rasselas.
Link
688. Biography; Humanity; Life
"I have often thought that there has
rarely passed a life of
which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful;
for not only every man has, in the mighty mass of the world,
great numbers in the same condition with himself, to whom his
mistakes and miscarriages, escapes and expedients, would be of
immediate and apparent use; but there is such a uniformity in
the state of man, considered apart from adventitious and
separable decorations and disguises, that there is scarce any
possibility of good or ill but is common to human kind."
Johnson: Rambler #60 (October 13, 1750)
Link
732. Life
"The main of life is ... composed of small incidents and petty
occurrences: of wishes for objects not remote, and grief for
disappointments of no fatal consequence; of insect vexations,
which sting us and fly away; impertinencies, which buzz a while
about us, and are heard no more; of meteorous pleasures, which
dance before us and are dissipated; of compliments, which glide
off the soul like other music, and are forgotten by him that
gave, and him that received them."
Johnson: Rambler #68 (November 10, 1750)
Link
733. Life
"As the chymists tell us, that all bodies are resolvable into the
same elements, and that the boundless variety of things arises
from the different proportions of very few ingredients; so a few
pains and a few pleasures are all the materials of human life,
and of these the proportions are partly allotted by Providence,
and partly left to the argument of reason and of choice."
Johnson: Rambler #68 (November 10, 1750)
Link
797. Corruption; Life; Moral
Instruction
"Those who exalt themselves into the chair of instruction,
without inquiring whether any will submit to their authority,
have not sufficiently considered how much of human life passes in
little incidents, cursory conversation, slight business, and
casual amusements; and therefore they have endeavoured only to
inculcate the more awful virtues, without condescending to regard
those petty qualities which grow important only by their
frequency, and which, though they produce no single acts of
heroism, nor astonish us by any great events, yet are every
moment exerting their influence upon us, and make the draught of
life sweet or bitter by imperceptible instillations. They
operate unseen and unregarded, as change of air makes us sick or
healthy, though we breathe it without attention, and only know
the particles that impregnate it by their salutary or malignant
effects."
Johnson: Rambler #72 (November 24, 1750)
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
963. Advice; Goodness; Happiness;
Life
"Little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man
could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it."
Johnson: Rambler #87 (January 15, 1751)
Link
1,004. Life
"Life passes, for the most part, in petty transactions... Our
hours glide away in trifling amusements and slight
gratifications; and there very seldom emerges any occasion that
can call forth great virtue or great abilities."
Johnson: Rambler #98 (February 23, 1751)
Link
1,097. Life; Satisfaction
"Many of our hours are lost in a rotation of petty cares, in a
constant recurrence of the same employments; many of our
provisions for ease or happiness are always exhausted by the
present day; and a great part of our existence serves no other
purpose than that of enabling us to enjoy the rest."
Johnson: Rambler #108 (March 30, 1751)
Link
1,107. Life; Satisfaction
"A perpetual conflict with natural desires seems to be the lot of
our present state."
Johnson: Rambler #111 (April 9, 1751)
Link
1,120. Equanimity; Life; Moderation;
Myopia; Perspective
"The province of prudence lies between the greatest things and
the least; some surpass our power by their magnitude, and some
escape our notice by their number and their frequency. But the
indispensable business of life will afford sufficient exercise to
every human understanding; and such is the limitation of the
human powers that, by attention to trifles, we must let things of
importance pass unobserved; when we examine a mite with a glass,
we see nothing but a mite."
Johnson: Rambler #112 (April 13, 1751)
Link
1,173. Apathy; Humanity; Identification;
Life
"Every class of society has its cant of lamentation, which is
understood or regarded by none but themselves; and every part of
life has its uneasiness, which those who do not feel them will
not commiserate. An event which spreads distraction over half
the commercial world, assembles the trading companies in councils
and committees, and shakes the nerves of a thousand stockjobbers,
is read by the landlord and the farmer with frigid
indifference."
Johnson: Rambler #128 (June 8, 1751)
Link
1,331. Life; Mortality;
Satisfaction
"That life is short we are all
convinced, and yet suffer not that
conviction to repress our projects or limit our expectations;
that life is miserable we all feel, and yet we believe that the
time is near when we shall feel it no longer. But to hope
happiness and immortality is equally vain. Our state may indeed
be more or less imbittered as our duration may be more or
less contracted; yet the utmost felicity which we can ever
attain will be little better than alleviation of misery, and we
shall always feel more pain from our wants than pleasure from our
enjoyments."
Johnson: Rambler #165 (October 15, 1751)
Link
1,332. Life
"To destroy the effect of all our success, it is not necessary
that any signal calamity should fall upon us, that we should
be harassed by implacable persecution, or excruciated by
irremediable pains; the brightest hours of prosperity have their
clouds, and the stream of life, if it not ruffled by
obstructions, will grow putrid by stagnation."
Johnson: Rambler #165 (October 15, 1751)
Link
1,401. Complaining; Life; Locus of
Control
"Many complaints are made of the misery of life; and indeed it
must be confessed that we are subject to calamities by which the
good and bad, the diligent and slothful, the vigilant and
heedless are equally afflicted. But surely, though some
indulgence may be allowed to groans extorted by inevitable
misery, no man has a right to repine at evils which, against
warning, against experience, he deliberately and leisurely brings
upon his own head; or to consider himself as debarred from
happiness by such obstacles as resolution may break, or dexterity
may put aside."
Johnson: Rambler #178 (November 30, 1751)
Link
1,409. Humanity; Life
"We are unreasonably desirous to separate the goods of life from
those evils which Providence has connected with them, and to
catch advantages without paying the price at which they are
offered to us. Every man wishes to be rich, but very few have
the powers necessary to raise a sudden fortune, either by new
discoveries, or by superiority of skill in any necessary
employment; and among lower understandings many want the firmness
and industry requisite to regular gain and gradual
acquisitions."
Johnson: Rambler #182 (December 14, 1751)
Link
1,457. Happiness; Life; Old Age;
Youth
"Such is the condition of life that something is always wanting
to happiness. In youth we have warm hopes, which are soon
blasted by rashness and negligence, and great designs which are
defeated by inexperience. In age, we have knowledge and
prudence, without spirit to exert, or motives to prompt them; we
are able to plan schemes, and regulate measures, but have not
time remaining to bring them to completion."
Johnson: Rambler #196 (February 1, 1752)
Link
1,474. Happiness; Life;
Mortality
"Every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from the
time to come. In youth we have nothing to entertain us, and in
age we derive little from retrospect but hopeless sorrow. Yet
the future likewise has its limits, which the imagination dreads
to approach, but which we see to be not far distant. The loss of
our friends and companions impresses hourly upon the necessity of
our own departure; we know that the schemes of man are quickly at
an end, that we soon must lie down in the grave with the
forgotten multitudes of former ages, and yield our place to
others, who, like us, shall be driven a while by hope and fear
about the surface of the earth, and then like us be lost in the
shades of death. Beyond this termination of our material
existence, we are therefore obliged to extend our hopes..."
Johnson: Rambler #203 (February 25, 1752)
Link
1,575. Change; Life;
Satisfaction
"Such ... is the state of life, that none are happy but by the
anticipation of change; the change itself is nothing; when we
have made it, the next wish is to change again."
Johnson: Rasselas (said by the Princess Nekayeh)
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from
Rasselas.
Link
1,585. Faith; Fallibility; Life
"Life is not the object of science: we see a little, very little;
and what is beyond we can only conjecture. If we enquire of
those who have gone before us, we receive small satisfaction;
some have travelled life without observation, and some willingly
mislead us. The only thought, therefore, on which we can repose
with comfort, is that which presents to us the care of
Providence, whose eye takes in the whole of things, and under
whose direction all involuntary errours will terminate in
happiness."
Johnson: Adventurer #107 (November 13, 1753)
Link
1,591. Life; Procrastination
"We see every day the unexpected death of our friends and our
enemies, we see new graves hourly opened for men older and
younger than our selves, for the cautious and the careless, the
dissolute and the temperate, for men who like us were providing
to enjoy or improve hours now irreversibly cut off: we see all
this, and yet, instead of living, let year glide after year in
preparations to live."
Johnson: Adventurer #108 (November 17, 1753)
Link
1,596. Ambition; Life
"Life affords no higher pleasure, than that of surmounting
difficulties, passing from one step of success to another,
forming new wishes, and seeing them gratified. He that labours in
any great or laudable undertaking, has his fatigues first
supported by hope, and afterwards rewarded by joy; he is always
moving to a certain end, and when he has attained it, an end more
distant invites him to a new pursuit."
Johnson: Adventurer #111 (November 27, 1753)
Link
1,598. Life; Complacency; Effort
"To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest
human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer:
but he whose life has passed without a contest, and who can boast
neither success nor merit, can survey himself only as a useless
filler of existence; ad if he is content with his own character,
must owe his satisfaction to insensibility."
Johnson: Adventurer #111 (November 27, 1753)
Link
1,631. Delusion; Life;
Satisfaction
"The world, in its best state, is nothing more than a larger
assembly of beings, combining to counterfeit happiness which they
do not feel, employing every art and contrivance to embellish
life, and to hide their real condition from the eyes of one
another."
Johnson: Adventurer #120 (December 29, 1753)
Link
1,652. Learning: Practicality;
Life
"No man can become qualified for the common intercourses of life,
by private meditation; 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."
Johnson: Adventurer #131 (February 5, 1754)
Link
1,721. Life; Vanity
"In the present state of the world man may pass through
Shakespeare's seven stages of life, and meet nothing singular or
wonderful. But such is every man's attention to himself, that
what is common and unheeded when it is only seen, becomes
remarkable and peculiar when we happen to feel it."
Johnson: Idler #50 (March 31, 1759)
Link
1,783. Life
"That every day has its pains and sorrows is universally
experienced, and almost universally confessed: but let us not
attend only to mournful truths; if we look impartially about us,
we shall find that every day has likewise its pleasures and
its joys."
Johnson: Idler #80 (October 27, 1759)
Link
1,835. Happiness; Life
"That kind of life is most happy which affords us most
opportunities of gaining our own esteem."
Johnson: Adventurer #111 (November 27, 1753)
Link
