Samuel Johnson Quotes: Sources, Meanings & Themes

Rasselas, Chapter XXI; spoken by Imlac while challenging the assumption that apparently wise people deliberately chose the condition they inhabit.

Rasselas, Chapter X; spoken by Imlac in his account of learning the poet’s craft through broad observation.

Rasselas, Chapter XXX; spoken by Imlac during a discussion of history, art and the practical use of studying what earlier people accomplished.

Rasselas, Chapter XVIII; Imlac encourages the prince after acknowledging that strong restraints may still exist.

Rasselas, Chapter XXX; Imlac argues that studying history helps people understand the sources of present benefits and harms.

The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia.

Rasselas, Chapter XVI; spoken by Imlac while comparing European life with the travelers’ expectations of happiness.

Chapter 41; the Astronomer explains why both competence and moral character are needed for trust.

The Idler, No. 88; Johnson is discussing a fictional philosophical society whose grand plans meet the slow pace of practical improvement.

The Idler, No. 90; Johnson is discussing gesture and public speaking, not asserting that every inherited custom should remain untouched.

The Idler, No. 88; the surrounding paragraph concerns private hopes, proposed tasks and the gap between imagined achievement and lived action.

The Idler, No. 11; this paper is not among the numbers Johnson’s own advertisement excluded from his authorship.

The Idler, No. 88; this clause comes from Johnson’s reflection on private ambitions that remain unfinished while days and years pass.

The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, “Pope”; Wikisource transcription of Johnson's Life of Pope. Johnson writes the sentence while discussing Alexander Pope's early estimate of his own abilities and immediately qualifies it by warning that isolated self-estimation can err.

The Rambler, No. 103.

The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), first-edition scholar passage, Wikisource scan leaf 28. “And pause awhile from Learning to be wise” turns from the ambitious student’s pursuit of knowledge toward Johnson’s satirical warning that learning does not by itself remove grief, danger or error. This is eighteenth-century moral-satirical poetry after Juvenal, not a modern educational rule.

The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), first-edition scholar / public-recognition passage, Wikisource scan leaf 28. “See Nations slowly wise, and meanly just” leads directly into the tardy-bust image of posthumous recognition. The first-edition transcription uses a comma after “just”; this collection’s semicolon is a retained punctuation normalization. This is Johnson’s historical-satirical judgment, not an empirical law of social progress.

The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), explicitly devotional closing movement, Wikisource first-edition scan leaf 41. “Pour forth thy Fervours for a healthful Mind, Obedient Passions, and a Will resign’d” belongs to Johnson’s concluding prayer for inward goods, patience and faith. “Healthful Mind” is preserved as historical religious-moral language and is not presented as modern medical or mental-health advice.

The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), first-edition scholar passage, Wikisource scan leaf 28. “There mark what Ills the Scholar’s Life assail” is followed by “Toil, Envy, Want, the Garret, and the Jail.” The first-edition transcription uses a comma after “assail”; this collection’s semicolon is a retained punctuation normalization. The couplet remains satirical literary context rather than a forecast of every scholar’s life.

The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), explicitly devotional closing movement, Wikisource first-edition scan leaf 41. Johnson allows supplication for good while telling the petitioner to leave “the Measure and the Choice” to Heaven. The passage remains eighteenth-century Christian moral poetry rather than universal therapeutic, medical or decision-making guidance.