Samuel Johnson - Power Quotes

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Philips, whose touch harmonious could remove
The pangs of guilty power and hapless love!
Rest here, distress'd by poverty no more;
Here find that calm thou gav'st so oft before;
Sleep undisturb'd within this peaceful shrine,
Till angels wake thee with a note like thine!

Samuel Johnson
Kindness, at least actual, is in our power, but fondness is not.

Samuel Johnson
There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

Samuel Johnson
When once a man has made celebrity necessary to his happiness, he has put it in the power of the weakest and most timorous malignity, if not to take away his satisfaction, at least to withhold it. His enemies may indulge their pride by airy negligence and gratify their malice by quiet neutrality.

Samuel Johnson
Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.

Samuel Johnson
The more contracted that power is, the more easily it is destroyed. A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.

Samuel Johnson
Every other enjoyment malice may destroy; every other panegyric envy may withhold; but no human power can deprive the boaster of his own encomiums.

Samuel Johnson
I soon found that wit, like every other power, has its boundaries; that its success depends upon the aptitude of others to receive impressions; and that as some bodies, indissoluble by heat, can set the furnace and crucible at defiance, there are min

Samuel Johnson
No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.

Samuel Johnson
Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation.

Samuel Johnson
There must always be a struggle between a father and son, while one aims at power and the other at independence.

Samuel Johnson
The violence of war admits no distinction; the lance, that is lifted at guilt and power, will sometimes fall on innocence and gentleness.

Samuel Johnson
Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions

Samuel Johnson
Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without very accurate inquiry whether it is right. It is sufficient that another is growing great in his own eyes at our expense, and assumes authority over us without our permission; for many would contentedly suffer the consequences of their own mistakes, rather than the insolence of him who triumphs as their deliverer.

Samuel Johnson
To expect that the intricacies of science will be pierced by a careless glance, or the eminences of fame ascended without labour, is to expect a peculiar privilege, a power denied to the rest of mankind; but to suppose that the maze is inscrutable to diligence, or the heights inaccessible to perseverance, is to submit tamely to the tyranny of fancy, and enchain the mind in voluntary shackles.

Samuel Johnson
The hostility perpetually exercised between one man and another, is caused by the desire of many for that which only few can possess. Every man would be rich, powerful, and famous; yet fame, power, and riches, are only the names of relative conditions, which imply the obscurity, dependence, and poverty of greater numbers.

Samuel Johnson
He [God] will not leave his promises unfulfilled, nor his threats unexecuted…Neither can he want power to execute his purposes; he who spoke, and the world was made, can speak again, and it will perish.

Samuel Johnson
Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any high degree; only about as much as is used in the lower kinds of poetry.

Samuel Johnson
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

Samuel Johnson
Those who are in the power of evil habits must conquer them as they can; and conquered they must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be attained: but those who are not yet subject to their influence may, by timely caution, preserve their freedom;

Samuel Johnson
The purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside

Samuel Johnson
Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in one mind but in one composition…That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature.

Samuel Johnson
The true Genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.

Samuel Johnson
The friendship which is to be practised or expected by common mortals, must take its rise from mutual pleasure, and must end when the power ceases of delighting each other.

Samuel Johnson
No man is without some quality, by the due application of which he might deserve well of the world; and whoever he be that has but little in his power should be in haste to do that little, lest he be confounded with him that can do nothing.

Samuel Johnson
All knowledge is of itself of some value. There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable, that I would not rather know it than not. In the same manner, all power, of whatever sort, is of itself desirable. A man would not submit to learn to hem a ruffle, of his wife, or his wife's maid; but if a mere wish could attain it, he would rather wish to be able to hem a ruffle.

Samuel Johnson
The mere power of saving what is already in our hands must be of easy acquisition to every mind; and as the example of Lord Bacon may show that the highest intellect cannot safely neglect it, a thousand instances every day prove that the humblest may practise it with success.

Samuel Johnson
Genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy which collects, combines, amplifies and animates.

Samuel Johnson