The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.

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G. Walker ... [and 9 others], 1820

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Pagina 83 - Cicero remarks, that not to know what has been transacted in former times, is to continue always a child. If no use is made of the labours of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.
Pagina 384 - Such is the emptiness of human enjoyment, that we are always impatient of the present. Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust; and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to every other course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last.1 Few moments are more pleasing than those in which the mind is concerting measures for a new undertaking.
Pagina 260 - The man who retires to meditate mischief, and to exasperate his own rage ; whose thoughts are employed only on means of distress, and contrivances of ruin ; whose mind never pauses from the remembrance of his own sufferings, but to indulge some hope of enjoying the calamities of another, may justly be numbered among the most miserable of human beings, among those who are guilty without reward, who have neither the gladness of prosperity nor the calm of innocence.
Pagina 261 - The utmost excellence at which humanity can arrive, is a constant and determinate pursuit of virtue, without regard to present dangers or advantage; a continual reference of every action to the divine will; an habitual appeal to everlasting justice ; and an unvaried elevation of the intellectual eye to the reward which perseverance only can obtain.
Pagina 390 - TIME, which puts an end to all human pleasures and sorrows, has likewise concluded the labours of the Rambler. Having supported, for two years, the anxious employment of a periodical writer, and multiplied my essays to six volumes *, I have now determined to desist.
Pagina 21 - Venus, take my votive glass, Since I am not what I was ; What from this day I shall be, Venus, let me never see.
Pagina 164 - In this passage is exerted all the force of poetry, that force which calls new powers into being, which embodies sentiment, and animates matter...
Pagina 251 - Almost every other crime is practised by the help of some quality which might have produced esteem or love, if it had been well employed ; but envy is mere unmixed and genuine evil ; it pursues a hateful end by despicable means, and desires not so much its own happiness as another's misery.
Pagina 386 - ... yet the toil with which performance struggles after idea, is so irksome and disgusting, and so frequent is the necessity of resting below that perfection which we imagined within our reach, that seldom any man obtains more from his endeavours than a painful conviction of his defects, and a continual resuscitation of desires which he feels himself unable to gratify.
Pagina 261 - ... would be extenuated by mistake, precipitance, or negligence; we cannot be certain how much more we feel than was intended to be inflicted, or how much we increase the mischief to ourselves by voluntary aggravations. We may charge to design the effects of accident; we may think the blow violent only because we have made ourselves delicate and tender ; we are on every side in danger of error and of guilt, which we are certain to avoid only by speedy forgiveness.

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