10 January 2014 - SAMUEL JOHNSON

SAMUEL JOHNSON

G'day folks,

Don't ya love the pic above? Anyway, today I feature some wise musings from Samuel Johnson. Who was he?

Samuel Johnson was an English poet, essayist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Samuel Johnson: (September 18, 1709–December 13, 1784) endures as one of the most influential figures in literary history. His Dictionary of the English Language, originally published in 1755, is celebrated as one of the highest achievements of Western scholarship. A brilliant man yet a confounding figure in his lifetime, his peculiar tics and quirky gestures were only posthumously diagnosed as Tourette’s syndrome.

 “It is one of the common distresses of a writer to be within a word of a happy period, to want only a single epithet to give amplification its full force, to require only a correspondent term in order to finish a paragraph with elegance and make one of its members answer to the other: but these deficiencies cannot always be supplied; and after a long study and vexation, the passage is turned anew, and the web unwoven that was so nearly finished. “ 

“The production of something, where nothing was before, is an act of greater energy than the expansion or decoration of the thing produced. Set down diligently your thoughts as they rise in the first words that occur; and, when you have matter, you will easily give it form: nor, perhaps, will this method always be necessary; for by habit your thoughts and diction will flow together.”

"Composition is for the most part an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements."

‘A cucumber should be well-sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out.’

‘A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.’

‘A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him.’

‘A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.’

‘Adversity is the state in which man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.’

‘Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.’

Clancy's comment: A very smart man indeed. Love comments and quotes by folks who lived ages ago.

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