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Expectation
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We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
-Samuel Johnson
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Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
-Samuel Johnson
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Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged, must end in disappointment. If it be asked, what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous to indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is such expectation as is dictated not by reason, but by desire; expectation raised, not by the common occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an expectation that requires the common course of things to be changed, and the general rules of action to be broken.
-Samuel Johnson, J. Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson, 1784
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I know not any thing more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.
-Samuel Johnson, Letter to Bennet Langton
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It is generally known, that he who expects much will be often disappointed; yet disappointment seldom cures us of expectation, or has any effect other than that of producing a moral sentence or peevish exclamation.
-Samuel Johnson, Idler #2, April 22, 1758
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Fame
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He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds; but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel.
-Samuel Johnson
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To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.
-Samuel Johnson
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Family
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Parents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavors to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children.
-Samuel Johnson
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You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
-Samuel Johnson
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Fashion
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Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a gray one.
-Samuel Johnson
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Fear
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Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God.
-Samuel Johnson
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Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil; but its duty, like that of other passions, is not to overbear reason, but to assist it. It should not be suffered to tyrannize
-Samuel Johnson
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Fish, Fishing
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Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
-Samuel Johnson
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Flattery
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Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.
-Samuel Johnson
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Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.
-Samuel Johnson
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Food
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A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.
-Samuel Johnson
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Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
-Samuel Johnson, Boswell: Life of Johnson
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Fortune
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Count on it, if a person talks of their misfortune, there is something in it that is not disagreeable to them.
-Samuel Johnson
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Freedom
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All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.
-Samuel Johnson
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Friends
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If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone; one should keep his friendships in constant repair.
-Samuel Johnson
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I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.
-Samuel Johnson
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Never, my dear Sir, do you take it into your head that I do not love you; you may settle yourself in full confidence both of my love and my esteem; I love you as a kind man, I value you as a worthy man, and hope in time to reverence you as a man of exemplary piety.
-Samuel Johnson
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The endearing elegance of female friendship.
-Samuel Johnson
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To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
-Samuel Johnson
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The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.
-Samuel Johnson
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Books by and about Samuel Johnson