A. Johnson
A. Johnson
uncertain stability bases
Since life itself is uncertain, nothing which has life for its basis can boast much stability.
sorrow useless hopeless
There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow.
crowns half morality
The morality of an action depends on the motive from which we act. If I fling half a crown to a beggar with intention to break his head and he picks it up and buy victuals with it, the physical effect is good. But with respect to me the action is very wrong.
truth yield people
Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.
daughter son ideas
I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.
enlargement language stability
Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of language.
pain expression pleasure
Pain is less subject than pleasure to careless expression.
pain soul way
Then with no throbs of fiery pain, No cold gradations of decay, Death broke at once the vital chain, And freed his soul the nearest way.
oxen fats should
Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.
advice littles good-advice
Few things are so liberally bestowed, or squandered with so little effect, as good advice.
office advice vehemence
If we consider the manner in which those who assume the office of directing the conduct of others execute their undertaking, it will not be very wonderful that their labours, however zealous or affectionate, are frequently useless. For what is the advice that is commonly given? A few general maxims, enforced with vehemence, and inculcated with importunity, but failing for want of particular reference and immediate application.
vanity advice instruction
There are few so free from vanity as not to dictate to those who will hear their instructions with a visible sense of their own beneficence.
perfection people advice
The desire of advising has a very extensive prevalence; and, since advice cannot be given but to those that will hear it, a patient listener is necessary to the accommodation of all those who desire to be confirmed in the opinion of their own wisdom: a patient listener, however, is not always to be had; the present age, whatever age is present, is so vitiated and disordered, that young people are readier to talk than to attend, and good counsel is only thrown away upon those who are full of their own perfections.
wise thinking being-wise
He that never thinks can never be wise.