B.S. Johnson Quotes
In this work are exhibited, in a very high degree, the two most engaging powers of an author. New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.
The highest panegyric, therefore, that private virtue can receive, is the praise of servants.
He who would govern his actions by the laws of virtue must regulate his thoughts by those of reason.
While an author is yet living, we estimate his powers by his worst performance; and when he is dead, we rate him by his best.
Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression; we must always purpose to do more or better than in time past.
There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets.
Reason will by degrees submit to absurdity, as the eye is in time accommodated to darkness.
The hour of reformation is always delayed; every delay gives vice another opportunity of fortifying itself by habit.
It may be observed in general that the future is purchased by the present. It is not possible to secure distant or permanent happiness but by the forbearance of some immediate gratification.
It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend.
The general remedy of those who are uneasy without knowing the cause is change of place.
Happiness," said he, "must be something solid and permanent, without fear and without uncertainty.
An author places himself uncalled before the tribunal of criticism and solicits fame at the hazard of disgrace.
Commerce can never be at a stop while one man wants what another can supply; and credit will never be denied, while it is likely to be repaid with profit.
Those authors who would find many readers, must endeavour to please while they instruct.
We are told, that the black bear is innocent; but I should not like to trust myself with him.
There must always be some advantage on one side or the other, and it is better that advantage should be had by talents than by chance.
Wine gives great pleasure, and every pleasure is of itself a good. and A man should cultivate his mind so as to have that confidence and readiness without wine, which wine gives.
Every man may be observed to have a certain strain of lamentation, some peculiar theme of complaint on which he dwells in his moments of dejection.
Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject.
There are few so free from vanity as not to dictate to those who will hear their instructions with a visible sense of their own beneficence.
The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers.
Let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.
Sir, it is wrong to stir up law-suits; but when once it is certain that a law-suit is to go on, there is nothing wrong in a lawyer's endeavouring that he shall have the benefit, rather than another.
There ambush here relentless ruffians lay, And here the fell attorney prowls for prey.
Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is.
A thousand years may elapse before there shall appear another man with a power of versification equal to that of Pope.
Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words.
