P. G. Johnson Quotes

The heroes of literary history have been no less remarkable for what they have suffered than for what they have achieved.

All history was at first oral.

Ignorance cannot always be inferred from inaccuracy; knowledge is not always present.

A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one; no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down.

I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.

The man who feels himself ignorant should, at least, be modest.

Peevishness may be considered the canker of life, that destroys its vigor and checks its improvement; that creeps on with hourly depredations, and taints and vitiates what it cannot consume.

Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals.

Our senses, our appetite, and our passions are our lawful and faithful guides in things that relate solely to this life.

Irresolution and mutability are often the faults of men whose views are wide, and whose imagination is vigorous and excursive.

A married man has many cares, but a bachelor no pleasures.

We consider ourselves as defective in memory, either because we remember less than we desire, or less than we suppose others to remember.

Pendantry is the unseasonable ostentation of learning. It may be discovered either in the choice of a subject or in the manner d treating it.

Instead of rating the man by his performances, we rate too frequently the performances by the man.

Of the present state, whatever it be, we feel and are forced to confess the misery; yet when the same state is again at a distance, imagination paints it as desirable.

The present is never a happy state to any human being.

The majority of a society is the true definition of the public.

When a man feel the reprehension of a friend seconded by his own heart, he is easily heated into resentment.

Scarce any man becomes eminently disagreeable but by a departure from his real character, and an attempt at something for which nature or education has left him unqualified.

Sir, there is no end of negative criticism.

The care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature.

Economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty, and of ease, and the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness and health.

The prospect of penury in age is so gloomy and terrifying that every man who looks before him must resolve to avoid it; and it must be avoided generally by the science of sparing.

Who left nothing of authorship untouched, and touched nothing which he did not adorn. [Lat., Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit; nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.]

No evil is insupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong.

Complaints are vain; we will try to. do better another time. To-morrow and to-morrow. A few designs and a few failures, and the time of designing is past.

Foppery is never cured; it is the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, are never rectified; once a coxcomb always a coxcomb.

How few of his friends' houses would a man choose to be at when he is sick.

The good of our present state is merely comparative, and the evil which every man feels will be sufficient to disturb and harass him if he does not know how much he escapes.

Every man that has felt pain knows how little all other comforts can gladden him to whom health is denied. Yet who is there does not sometimes hazard it for the enjoyment of an hour?

None are happy but by anticipation of change.

Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness, which nature has kindly placed within our reach.

So scanty is our present allowance of happiness that in many situations life could scarcely be supported if hope were not allowed to relieve the present hour by pleasures borrowed from the future.

Terrestrial happiness is of short duration. The brightness of the flame is wasting its fuel; the fragrant flower is passing away in its own odors.

We seldom require more to the happiness of the present hour than to surpass him that stands next before us.

I wish you would add an index rerum, that when the reader recollects any incident he may easily find it.

The seeds of knowledge may be planted in solitude, but must be cultivated in public.

Life, however short, is made still shorter by waste of time.

Misfortunes should always be expected.

The commodiousness of money is indeed great; but there are some advantages which money cannot buy, and which therefore no wise man will by the love of money be tempted to forego.

In all political regulations, good cannot be complete, it can only be predominant.

What is said upon a subject is gathered from an hundred people.

More is learned in a public than in a private school, from emulation. There is the collision of mind with mind, or the radiation of many minds pointing to one center.

To go and see one druidical temple is only to see that it is nothing, for there is neither art nor power in it; and seeing one is quite enough.

Every man is prompted by the love of himself to imagine that he possesses some qualities superior, either in kind or degree, to those which he sees allotted to the rest of the world.

Self-love is a busy prompter.

Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge is to a forest.

In his comic scenes, Shakespeare seems to produce, without labor, what no labor can improve.

It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept; and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence.

The stream of Time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare.