Quotes by Johnson

"If the career you have chosen has some unexpected inconvenience, console yourself by reflecting that no career is without them."

Johnson on adversity
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"One of the aged greatest miseries is that they cannot easily find a companion able to share the memories of the past."

Johnson on age and aging   

"If what happens does not make us richer, we must welcome it if it makes us wiser."

Johnson on experience   

"No one will persist long in helping someone who will not help themselves."

Johnson on aid and assistance
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"To have gold is to be in fear, and to want it to be sorrow."

Johnson on gold   

"Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, I did not give it to the man, but to humanity."

Johnson on humankind   

"Language is the pedigree of nations."

Johnson on language   

"Laws teach us to know when we commit injury and when we suffer it."

Johnson on law and lawyers   

"The true sound and strong mind is the one that can embrace equally great and small things."

Johnson on mind   

"Our minds should not be empty because if they are not preoccupied by good, evil will break in upon them."

Johnson on mind   

"He that undervalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them."

Johnson on self-esteem   

"Try and forget our cares and sickness, and contribute, as we can to the happiness of each other."

Johnson on service   

"Tradition is but a meteor, which, if it once falls, cannot be rekindled. Memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. But written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has passed away, is again bright in its proper station. So books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when opened again, will again impart instruction."

Johnson on books - reading   

"Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them."

Johnson on books - reading   

"He that never thinks can never be wise."

Johnson on thoughts and thinking   

"To hear complaints is tiresome to the miserable and the happy."

Johnson on complaints and complaining   

"When a person finds themselves predisposed to complaining about how little they are regarded by others, let them reflect how little they have contributed to the happiness of others."

Johnson on complaints and complaining
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"When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away."

Johnson on complaints and complaining   

"There is nothing that exasperates people more than a display of superior ability or brilliance in conversation. They seem pleased at the time, but their envy makes them curse the conversationalist in their heart."

Johnson on conversation