“Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.”

— Samuel Johnson, The Idler

No. 40 (January 20, 1759)
The Idler (1758–1760)
Context: Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is, therefore, become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetick. Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.

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 "Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement." by Samuel Johnson?

Samuel Johnson362

English writer 1709–1784

Related quotes

“The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

Originally from Stuart Chase
Misattributed

“This ascent will be betrayed to Gravity. But the Rocket engine, the deep cry of combustion that jars the soul, promises escape. The victim, in bondage to falling, rises on a promise, a prophecy, of Escape….”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
Context: This ascent will be betrayed to Gravity. But the Rocket engine, the deep cry of combustion that jars the soul, promises escape. The victim, in bondage to falling, rises on a promise, a prophecy, of Escape....
Moving now toward the kind of light where at last the apple is apple-colored. The knife cuts through the apple like a knife cutting an apple. Everything is where it is, no clearer than usual, but certainly more present. So much has to be left behind now, so quickly.

“There is no soul under heaven that commonly lies under the commanding power of the Word, but that soul that has an interest in the Word of Promise.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

A Cabinet of Jewels

“Complete freedom meant — no one knew. It was most readily defined in the negative: not this gap between the heaven promised in the new advertisements and the everyday satisfactions I can buy.”

Greil Marcus (1945) American historian

Lipstick Traces : A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989), pp. 147–148.
Context: Complete freedom meant — no one knew. It was most readily defined in the negative: not this gap between the heaven promised in the new advertisements and the everyday satisfactions I can buy. Not the sense that when I leave my work for my family, and bring my family to a Sunday in the park, my leisure feels like work. Not this mad conviction that I’m a stranger in my own home town, that at work I feel like a machine, that in the park I feel like an advertisement, that at home I feel like a tourist.