“He left the name at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a tale.”

—  Samuel Johnson

Source: Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), Line 221

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "He left the name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale." by Samuel Johnson?
Samuel Johnson photo
Samuel Johnson362
English writer 1709–1784

Related quotes

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“It was no fancy, he had named the name
Of love, and at that thought her cheek grew flame:”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Juliet after the Masquerade. By Thompson
The Troubadour (1825)

Samuel Johnson photo

“A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian,
Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched,
And touched nothing that he did not adorn.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Epitaph on Goldsmith
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Pearl S. Buck photo

“Out of this folk mind, turned into stories and crowded with thousands of years of life, grew, literally, the Chinese novel. For these novels changed as they grew. If, as I have said, there are no single names attached beyond question to the great novels of China, it is because no one hand wrote them. From beginning as a mere tale, a story grew through succeeding versions, into a structure built by many hands.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

The Chinese Novel (1938)

Jay Nordlinger photo

“There's a point at which left and right join.”

Jay Nordlinger (1963) American journalist

&quot;Jaywalking&quot; https://web.archive.org/web/20180913133208/https://jaywalking-tapes.nationalreview.com/jaywalking-035-09.12.2018.mp3 (12 September 2018), National Review <br class="br">2010s

Douglas Adams photo

“He was constantly reminded of how startlingly different a place the world was when viewed from a point only three feet to the left.”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

Source: The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

“I'm fascinated with the stories that we tell. Real histories become fantasies and fairy tales, morality tales and fables.”

Kara Walker (1969) African American artist

Vyasa photo

“Because you paled on seeing my ugliness, your son shall be pale (pandu), and that will be his name, O, woman with the beautiful face.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

Vyasa’s curse to the second widowed wife of his half brother on the son to be born to them. The second widowed princess was frightened at the ugly sight of Vyasa during their union. Thus, Pandu, a pale looking son was born to them. Quoted in P.58.
Sources, Seer of the Fifth Veda: Kr̥ṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa in the Mahābhārata

Karl Barth photo

“The name Jesus defines an historical occurence and marks the point where the unknown world cuts the known world . . . as Christ Jesus is the plane which lies beyond our comprehension.”

Karl Barth book The Epistle to the Romans

The Epistle to the Romans (1918; 1921)
Context: The name Jesus defines an historical occurence and marks the point where the unknown world cuts the known world... as Christ Jesus is the plane which lies beyond our comprehension. The plane which is known to us, He intersects vertically, from above. Within history Jesus as the Christ can be understood only as Problem or Myth. As the Christ He brings the world of the Father. But we who stand in this concrete world know nothing, and are incapable of knowing anything, of that other world. The Resurrection from the dead is, however, the transformation: the establishing or declaration of that point from above, and the corresponding discerning of it below. <!-- p. 29

John Gray photo

“Theories of modernisation are cod-scientific projections of Enlightenment values. They tell us nothing about the future. But they do help us to understand the present. They show the lingering power of the Christian faith that history is a moral drama, a tale of progress or redemption, in which - despite everything we know of it - morality rules the world.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Non-Progress: The myth of modernisation (p. 174)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Will Cuppy photo

“Charlemagne's strong point was morals. He was so moral that some people thought he was only fooling. These people came to no good.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part III: Strange Bedfellows, Charlemagne

Related topics