B.S. Johnson Quotes

Of many, imagined blessings it may be doubted whether he that wants or possesses them had more reason to be satisfied with his lot.

...it will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor.

Lectures were once useful; but now when all can read, and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary.

Since life itself is uncertain, nothing which has life for its basis can boast much stability.

What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.

Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, I did not give it to the man, but to humanity.

Try and forget our cares and sickness, and contribute, as we can to the happiness of each other.

Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politics, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.

For who is pleased with himself.

Then with no throbs of fiery pain, No cold gradations of decay, Death broke at once the vital chain, And freed his soul the nearest way.

I never take a nap after dinner but when I have had a bad night, and then the nap takes me.

I never have sought the world; the world was not to seek me.

We may have many acquaintances, but we can have but few friends; this made Aristotle say that he that hath many friends hath none.

Pension: An allowance made to anyone without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.

Few things are so liberally bestowed, or squandered with so little effect, as good advice.

Little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it.

No man tells his opinion so freely as when he imagines it received with implicit veneration.

Stand Firm for your country, and become a man Honour'd and lov'd: It were a noble life, To be found dead, embracing her.

He that never thinks can never be wise.

One of the aged greatest miseries is that they cannot easily find a companion able to share the memories of the past.

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.

He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience. We have always protected the Americans; we may therefore subject them to government.

Vulgar and inactive minds confound familiarity with knowledge, and conceive themselves informed of the whole nature of things, when they are shown their form or told their use.

Many falsehoods are passing into uncontradicted history.

If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.

Curiosity, like all other desires, produces pain as well as pleasure.

Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation.

The business of a poet is to examine not the individual but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances.

It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.

As a madman is apt to think himself grown suddenly great, so he that grows suddenly great is apt to borrow a little from the madman.

Friendship is not always the sequel of obligation.

Cunning has effect from the credulity of others, rather than from the abilities of those who are cunning. It requires no extraordinary talents to lie and deceive.

All imposture weakens confidence and chills benevolence.

The happiness of building lasted but a little while, for though I love to spend, I hate to be cheated; and I soon found, that to build is to be robbed.

Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.

The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.

No man can perform so little as not to have reason to congratulate himself on his merits, when he beholds the multitude that live in total idleness, and have never yet endeavoured to be useful.

All industry must be excited by hope.

Those who attempt nothing themselves think every thing easily performed, and consider the unsuccessful always as criminal.

A man is not obliged honestly to answer a question which should not properly be put.

Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new.

He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into the short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.

The finest landscape in the world is improved by a good inn in the foreground.

Men hate more steadily than they love.

It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.

Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment.

It is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful.

Every man is of importance to himself.

Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.

The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.