414 quotes
Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy; affectation, part of the chosen trappings of folly! The one completes a villain, the other only finishes a fop. Contempt is the proper punishment of affectation, and detestation the just consequence of hypocrisy.
The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity…. The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
[Of Lord Chesterfield] This man, I thought, had been a Lord among wits; but, I find, he is only a wit among Lords!
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
In misery's darkest cavern known,
His useful care was ever nigh
Where hopeless anguish pour'd his groan,
And lonely want retir'd to die.
Elegy on the Death of Mr. Robert Levet, A Practiser in Physic (1783)
In Misery's darkest caverns known,
His useful care was ever nigh,
Where hopeless Anguish pour'd his groan,
And lonely want retir'd to die.
To a poet nothing can be useless.
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759)
"I fly from pleasure," said the prince, "because pleasure has ceased to please; I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others."
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759)
Hunting was the labour of the savages of North America, but the amusement of the gentlemen of England.
The poet must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place.
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759)
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.
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759)
And sure th' Eternal Master found
His single talent well employ'd.
Elegy on the Death of Mr. Robert Levet, A Practiser in Physic (1783)
[S]uch is the delight of mental superiority, that none on whom nature or study have conferred it, would purchase the gifts of fortune by its loss.
A thousand horrid Prodigies foretold it.
A feeble government, eluded Laws,
A factious Populace, luxurious Nobles,
And all the maladies of stinking states.
The Tragedy of Irene (1749)
/ You have by every kind of evidence, lost an excellent mother; and I hope you will not think me incapable of sharing your grief. I have a mother, now eight-two years of age, whom, therefore, I must soon lose, unless it please that she rather should mourn for me.
There is a wicked inclination in most people to suppose an old man decayed in his intellects. If a young or middle-aged man, when leaving a company, does not remember where he laid his hat, it is nothing; but if the same inattention is discovered in an old man, people will shrug up their shoulders, and say, "His memory is going."
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
Johnson said that he could repeat a complete chapter of "The Natural History of Iceland" from the Danish of Horrebow, the whole of which was exactly thus: "There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island." 62 [Chap. lxxii.]
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.
The Idler (1758)
Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger at his death.
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!
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)
As with my hat upon my head
I walk'd along the Strand,
I there did meet another man
With his hat in his hand.