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Samuel Johnson -
Hope
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No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.
Samuel Johnson
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Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty, could have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation.
Samuel Johnson
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Such is the pleasure of projecting that many content themselves with a succession of visionary schemes, and wear out their allotted time in the calm amusement of contriving what they never attempt or hope to execute.
Samuel Johnson
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To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
Samuel Johnson
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Never, my dear Sir, do you take it into your head that I do not love you; you may settle yourself in full confidence both of my love and my esteem; I love you as a kind man, I value you as a worthy man, and hope in time to reverence you as a man of exemplary piety.
Samuel Johnson
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They who have already enjoyed the crowds and noise of the great city, know their desire to return is little more than the restlessness of a vacant mind, that they are not so much led by hope as driven by disgust, and wish rather to leave the country than to see the town.
Samuel Johnson
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So scanty is our present allowance of happiness that in many situations life could scarcely be supported if hope were not allowed to relieve the present hour by pleasures borrowed from the future.
Samuel Johnson
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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
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We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
Samuel Johnson
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Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religions hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper and deeper.
Samuel Johnson
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Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed; but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disciplined by an easy separation...to die is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.
Samuel Johnson
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To purchase Heaven has gold the power?
Can gold remove the mortal hour?
In life can love be bought with gold?
Are friendship's pleasures to be sold?
No--all that's worth a wish--a thought,
Fair virtue gives unbribed, unbought.
Cease then on trash thy hopes to bind,
Let nobler views engage thy mind.
Samuel Johnson
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With what hope can we endeavor to persuade the ladies that the time spent at the toilet is lost in vanity.
Samuel Johnson
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I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian ['Ossian'].
Samuel Johnson
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The history of mankind is little else than a narrative of designs which have failed and hopes that have been disappointed.
Samuel Johnson
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We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure.
Samuel Johnson
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Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.
Samuel Johnson
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There is such a difference between the pursuits of men in great cities that one part of the inhabitants lives to little other purpose than to wonder at the rest. Some have hopes and fears, wishes and aversions, which never enter into the thoughts of others, and inquiry is laboriously exerted to gain that which those who possess it are ready to throw away.
Samuel Johnson
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The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
Samuel Johnson
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For sorrow there is no remedy provided by nature; it is often occasioned by accidents irreparable, and dwells upon objects that have lost or changed their existence; it requires what it cannot hope, that the laws of the universe should be repealed; that the dead should return, or the past should be recalled.
Samuel Johnson
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But the distant hope of being one day useful or eminent ought not to mislead us too far from that study which is equally requisite to the great and mean, to the celebrated and obscure; the art of moderating the desires, of repressing the appetites; and of conciliating or retaining the favour of mankind.
Samuel Johnson
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There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that Nature has given him something peculiar to himself.
Samuel Johnson
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He that thinks himself capable of astonishing may write blank verse: but those that hope only to please must condescend to rhyme.
Samuel Johnson
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When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.
Samuel Johnson
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To scatter praise or blame without regard to justice is to destroy the distinction of good and evil. Many have no other test of actions than general opinion; and all are so far influenced by a sense of reputation that they are often restrained by fear of reproach, and excited by hope of honour, when other principles have lost their power.
Samuel Johnson
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Quote of the day
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
Samuel Johnson
Creative Commons
Born:
September 18, 1709
Died:
December 13, 1784
(aged 75)
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