With what hope can we endeavor to persuade the ladies that the time spent at the toilet is lost in vanity.
Samuel JohnsonThose authors who would find many readers, must endeavour to please while they instruct.
Samuel JohnsonI will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom.
Samuel JohnsonBooks, says Lord Bacon, can never teach us the use of books; the student must learn by commerce with mankind to reduce his speculations to practice. No man should think so highly of himself as to think he can receive but little light from books; no one so meanly, as to believe he can discover nothing but what is to be learned from them.
Samuel JohnsonBut though it cannot be reasonable not to gain happiness for fear of losing it, yet it must be confessed, that in proportion to the pleasure of possession, will be for some time our sorrow for the loss.
Samuel JohnsonThe imaginations excited by the view of an unknown and untravelled wilderness are not such as arise in the artificial solitude of parks and gardens... The phantoms which haunt a desert are want, and misery, and danger; the evils of dereliction rush upon the thoughts; man is made unwillingly acquainted with his own weakness, and meditation shows him only how little he can sustain, and how little he can perform.
Samuel Johnson