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No man can form a just estimate of his own powers by unactive speculation. That fortitude which has encountered no dangers, that prudence which has surmounted no difficulties, that integrity which has been attacked by…
No man can form a just estimate of his own powers by unactive speculation. That fortitude which has encountered no dangers, that prudence which has surmounted no difficulties, that integrity which has been attacked by…
Every man believes that mistresses are unfaithful, and patrons capricious; but he excepts his own mistress, and his own patron. –Samuel Johnson, in James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson The tribe is likewise very numerous…
“… at least resolve, while you remain in any settled residence, to spend a certain number of hours every day amongst your books…”—Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson “Amongst” could…
Depend upon it, Sir, vivacity is much an art, and depends greatly on habit.—Samuel Johnson, in A Johnson Sampler, edited by Henry Darcy Curwen. I’ve never thought about vivacity in this way …To master an…
Let us cease to consider what, perhaps, may never happen, and what, when it shall happen, will laugh at human speculation. We will not endeavour to modify the motions of the elements, or to fix…
And if his life was important, if it differed from other lives, it was because even its smallest, seemingly mutest events took on meaning, and acquired a resonance of their own, from Ludmila’s presence in…
It is the duty of every man to endeavour that something may be added by his industry to the hereditary aggregate of knowledge and happiness. To add much can indeed be the lot of few,…
Yet we to whom the shortness of life has given frequent occasions of contemplating mortality, can, without emotion, see generations of men pass away, and are at leisure to establish modes of sorrow, and adjust…
But the fate of learned ambition is a proper subject for every scholar to consider; for who has not had occasion to regret the dissipation of great abilities in a boundless multiplicity of pursuits, to…
Open your heart to the influence of the light which, from time to time, breaks in upon you: when scruples importune you, which you in your lucid moments know to be vain, do not stand…