Samuel Johnson idézet

oldal 8

„A titok megtartása bölcsesség, de elvárni, hogy mások is megtartsák, ostobaság.”

„Ha az ember nem köt új ismeretségeket az élete során, végül egyedül marad. Az embernek, uram, állandóan karban kell tartania a barátságait.”

„A szerelem a bolond bölcsessége és a bölcs bolondsága.”

„Az emlékezet minden bölcsesség anyja.”

„A barátságot, akárcsak a szerelmet, a hosszú távollét tönkreteszi, bár rövid szünetekkel tovább tarthat.”

„Senki sem mehet vissza és kezdhet újra, de bárki elkezdheti a mai napot és új befejezéssel zárhatja le.”

“It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say.”

“The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.”

“Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.”

“Blown about with every wind of criticism.”

“The insolence of wealth will creep out.”

“A thousand horrid Prodigies foretold it.
A feeble government, eluded Laws,
A factious Populace, luxurious Nobles,
And all the maladies of stinking states.”

“Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger at his death.”

“Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.”

“No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.”

“And sure th' Eternal Master found
His single talent well employ'd.”

“Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties.”

“I never take a nap after dinner but when I have had a bad night; and then the nap takes me.”

“Mrs. Montagu has dropt me. Now, Sir, there are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by.”

“Employment, sir, and hardships prevent melancholy.”

“This mournful truth is ev'rywhere confessed —
Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed.”

“A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.”

“The first years of man must make provision for the last.”

“No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”

“A transition from an author's book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.”

“That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.”

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

“EXCISE — A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.”

“It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm.”

“Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise!
From Marlb'rough's eyes the streams of dotage flow,
And Swift expires, a driv'ler and a show.”

“Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty, could have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation.”

“No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.”

“A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.”

“Shakspeare never has six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven: but this does not refute my general assertion.”

“Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility.”