B.S. Johnson Quotes
There is no being so poor and so contemptible, who does not think there is somebody still poorer, and still more contemptible.
Pain and disease awaken us to convictions which are necessary to our moral condition.
Whoever rises above those who once pleased themselves with equality, will have many malevolent gazers at his eminence.
Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether or not your flattery is worth his having.
When people find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer their inferior while he is with them, it must be highly gratifying to them.
In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness - inspissated gloom.
It is easy for a man who sits idle at home, and has nobody to please but himself, to ridicule or censure the common practices of mankind.
The difference between coarse and refined abuse is the difference between being bruised by a club and wounded by a poisoned arrow.
Diligence in employments of less consequence is the most successful introduction to greater enterprises.
I wish there were some cure, like the lover's leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession.
The history of mankind is little else than a narrative of designs which have failed and hopes that have been disappointed.
London! the needy villain's general home, The common sewer of Paris and of Rome! With eager thirst, by folly or by fate, Sucks in the dregs of each corrupted state.
A good wife is like the ivy which beautifies the building to which it clings, twining its tendrils more lovingly as time converts the ancient edifice into a ruin.
These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes.
Present opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages.
To paint things as they are requires a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy.
Conjecture as to things useful, is good; but conjecture as to what it would be useless to know, is very idle.
I remember a passage in Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: "I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.
The arguments for purity of life fail of their due influence, not because they have been considered and confuted, but because they have been passed over without consideration.
His most frequent ailment was the headache which he used to relieve by inhaling the steam of coffee.
A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.
I inherited a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.
How gloomy would be the mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he should never die: that what now acts shall continue its agency, and what now thinks shall think on forever!
Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one.
Everybody loves to have things which please the palate put in their way, without trouble or preparation.
A man, doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote enquiries.
Hope is an amusement rather than a good, and adapted to none but very tranquil minds.
Good-humor is a state between gayety and unconcern,--the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another.
Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits; the other recreates and revives them.
Genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy which collects, combines, amplifies and animates.
There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse.