266

“There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible… Pound St. Paul’s church into atoms, and consider any single atom; it is, to be sure, good for nothing: but, put all these atoms together, and you have St. Paul’s church. So it is with human felicity, which is made up of many ingredients, each of which may be shewn to be very insignificant.”

~ Samuel Johnson in Boswell’s Life of Johnson

217

“Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess and to gain applause which he cannot keep.”

~ Samuel Johnson, The Rambler

181

“Time ought, above all other kinds of property, to be free from invasion; and yet there is no man who does not claim the power of wasting that time which is the right of others.”

~ Dr Johnson, The Idler

161

“Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale.”

~ Dr. Johnson in a letter to Hester Thrale

118

“There is nothing, I think, in which the power of art is shown so much as in playing on the fiddle. In all other things we can do something at first. Any man will forge a bar of iron, if you give him a hammer; not so well as a smith, but tolerably. A man will saw a piece of wood, and make a box, though a clumsy one; but give him a fiddle and a fiddle-stick, and he can do nothing.”

~ Samuel Johnson in Boswell’s Life of Johnson

81

“Life admits not of delays; when pleasure is to be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.”

~ Samuel Johnson in Boswell’s Life of Johnson

12

“It is a melancholy consideration, that so much of our time is necessarily to be spent upon the care of living, and that we can seldom obtain ease in one respect but by resigning it in another; yet I suppose that we are by this dispensation not less happy in the whole, than if the spontaneous bounty of Nature poured all that we want into our hands. A few, if they were left thus to themselves, would, perhaps, spend their time in laudable pursuits; but the greater part would prey upon the quiet of each other, or, in the want of other objects, would prey upon themselves.”

~ Samuel Johnson in a letter to George Staunton