Samuel Johnson - The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759)

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Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Samuel Johnson
Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness had before concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature with cruelty.

Samuel Johnson
Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage,
Till pitying Nature signs the last release,
And bids afflicted worth retire to peace.

Samuel Johnson
Fate wings, with every wish, the afflictive dart,
Each gift of nature, and each grace of art.

Samuel Johnson
Nothing … will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.

Samuel Johnson
The world is not yet exhausted: let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.

Samuel Johnson
Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

Samuel Johnson
I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.

Samuel Johnson
Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

Samuel Johnson
[The poet] must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place.

Samuel Johnson
"I fly from pleasure," said the prince, "because pleasure has ceased to please; I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others."

Samuel Johnson
The first years of man must make provision for the last.

Samuel Johnson
Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanicks laughs at strength.

Samuel Johnson
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.

Samuel Johnson
"Some," answered Imlac, "have indeed said that the soul is material, but I can scarcely believe that any man has thought it, who knew how to think; for all the conclusions of reason enforce the immateriality of mind, and all the notices of sense and investigations of science, concur to prove the unconsciousness of matter.

Samuel Johnson
Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed.

Samuel Johnson
A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.

Samuel Johnson
Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.

Samuel Johnson