The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An Essay on His Life and Genius, Volume 6

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Luke Hansard & Sons, 1810

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Page 394 - When common words were less pleasing to the ear, or less distinct in their signification, I have familiarized the 'terms of philosophy, by applying them to popular ideas.
Page 99 - Is it not certain that the tragic and comic affections have been moved alternately with equal force, and that no plays have oftener filled the eye with tears, and the breast with palpitation than those which are variegated with interludes of mirth ? I do not however think it safe to judge of works of genius merely by the event.
Page 166 - You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry " Hold, hold !
Page 21 - Venus, take my votive glass, Since I am not what I was , What from this day I shall be, Venus let me never see.
Page 385 - OUCH is the emptiness of human enjoyment, that we are always impatient of the present. Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust; and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to every other course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last.
Page 387 - ... which performance struggles after idea, is so irksome and disgusting, and so frequent is the necessity of resting below that perfection which we imagined within our reach, that seldom any man obtains more from his endeavours than a painful conviction of his defects, and a continual resuscitation of desires which he feels himself unable to gratify.
Page 262 - The man who retires to meditate mischief, and to exasperate his own rage ; whose thoughts are employed only on means of distress, and contrivances of ruin ; whose mind never pauses from the remembrance of his own sufferings, but to indulge some hope of enjoying the calamities of another, may justly be numbered among the most miserable of human beings, among those who are guilty without reward, who have neither the gladness of prosperity nor the calm of innocence.
Page 264 - Of him that hopes to be forgiven, it is indispensably required that he forgive. It is therefore superfluous to urge any other motive. On this great duty eternity is suspended, and to him that refuses to practise it, the Throne of mercy is inaccessible, and the Saviour of the world has been born in vain.
Page 100 - It ought to be the first Endeavour of a Writer to distinguish Nature from Custom, or that which is established because it is right, from that which is right only because it is established...
Page 393 - confers a right of acting and speaking with less restraint, even when the wearer happens to be known." He that is discovered without his own consent may claim some indulgence, and cannot be rigorously called to justify those sallies or...

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