The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
Samuel Johnson Quotes
The triumph of hope over experience. (on a second marriage)
The known shortness of life, as it ought to moderate our passions, may likewise, with equal propriety, contract our designs. There is not time for the most forcible genius, and most active industry, to extend its effect beyond a certain sphere. To project the conquest of the world is the madness of mighty princes; to […]
Nothing is ended with honour which does not conclude better than it began.
To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition; the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.
It is… at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often for show in painted honor and fictitious benevolence.
Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place.
Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions.
We must consider how very little history there is; I mean real authentic history. That certain Kings reigned, and certain battles were fought, we can depend on as true; but all the coloring, all the philosophy of history is conjecture.
The present state of things is the consequence of the former, and it is natural to enquire what were the sources of the good that we enjoy, or the evil that we suffer. If we act only for ourselves, to neglect the study of history is not prudent: if we are intrusted with the care […]
