Samuel Johnson: Citáty anglicky
Samuel Johnson byl anglický spisovatel. Citáty anglicky.“Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments”
No. 163 (8 October 1751)
The Rambler (1750–1752)
Kontext: Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments; any enlargement of wishes is therefore equally destructive to happiness with the diminution of possession, and he that teaches another to long for what he never shall obtain is no less an enemy to his quiet than if he had robbed him of part of his patrimony.
“It is better to live rich, than to die rich.”
April 17, 1778
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III
Attributed in Instructions to Young Sportsmen (1824) by Colonel Peter Hawker
“Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.”
April 7, 1779
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III
“Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.”
Zdroj: Works of Samuel Johnson
“Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords”
Letter, June 8, 1762 [to an unnamed recipient], p. 103
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I
Kontext: Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged must end in disappointment. If it be asked, what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous to indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is such expectation as is dictated not by reason, but by desire; expectation raised, not by the common occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an expectation that requires the common course of things to be changed, and the general rules of action to be broken.
1770, p. 182
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II
“He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.”
No. 57 (May 19, 1759)
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Zdroj: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 31
Kontext: “That the dead are seen no more,” said Imlac, “I will not undertake to maintain against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages and of all nations. There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which perhaps prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth: those that never heard of one another would not have agreed in a tale which nothing but experience can make credible. That it is doubted by single cavillers can very little weaken the general evidence, and some who deny it with their tongues confess it by their fears.
“Yet I do not mean to add new terrors to those which have already seized upon Pekuah. There can be no reason why spectres should haunt the Pyramid more than other places, or why they should have power or will to hurt innocence and purity. Our entrance is no violation of their privileges: we can take nothing from them; how, then, can we offend them?”
The Patriot (1774)
Kontext: Some claim a place in the list of patriots, by an acrimonious and unremitting opposition to the court. This mark is by no means infallible. Patriotism is not necessarily included in rebellion. A man may hate his king, yet not love his country.
“Strange! that this general fraud from day to day
Should fill the world with wretches undetected.”
The Tragedy of Irene (1749), Act III, Sc. 2
Kontext: To-morrow's action! Can that hoary wisdom,
Borne down with years, still doat upon tomorrow!
That fatal mistress of the young, the lazy,
The coward, and the fool, condemn'd to lose
A useless life in waiting for to-morrow,
To gaze with longing eyes upon to-morrow,
Till interposing death destroys the prospect
Strange! that this general fraud from day to day
Should fill the world with wretches undetected.
The soldier, labouring through a winter's march,
Still sees to-morrow drest in robes of triumph;
Still to the lover's long-expecting arms
To-morrow brings the visionary bride.
But thou, too old to hear another cheat,
Learn, that the present hour alone is man's.
“It is seldom that we find either men or places such as we expect them.”
No. 58 (May 26, 1759)
The Idler (1758–1760)
Kontext: It is seldom that we find either men or places such as we expect them.... Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.