We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as a guide.
Samuel Johnson Quotes
No man is much pleased with a companion, who does not increase, in some respect, his fondness for himself; and, therefore, he that wishes rather to be led forward to prosperity by the gentle hand of favor than to force his way by labour and merit must consider with more care how to display his […]
I am not so much inclined to wonder that marriage is sometimes unhappy, as that it appears so little loaded with calamity; and cannot but conclude that society has something in itself eminently agreeable to human nature, when I find its pleasures so great that even the ill choice of a companion can hardly overbalance […]
Men become friends by a community of pleasures.
Quotation is a good thing, there is a community of thought in it.
All discourse of which others cannot partake is not only an irksome usurpation of the time devoted to pleasure and entertainment, but, what never fails to excite resentment, an insolent assertion of superiority, and a triumph over less enlightened understandings. The pedant is, therefore, not only heard with weariness but malignity; and those who conceive […]
Whatever is common is despised. Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic.
Comedy has been particularly unpropitious to definers; for though, perhaps, they might properly have contented themselves with declaring it to be such a dramatic representation of human life as may excite mirth, they have embarrassed their definition with the means by which the comic writers attain their end, without considering that the various methods of […]
Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect.
And in answer to the arguments urged by Puritans, Quakers, and etc. against showy decorations of the human figure, I once heard (Johnson) exclaim, “Oh, let us not be found when our Master calls us, ripping the lace off our waistcoats, but the spirit of our contention from our souls and our tongues! Let us […]
