Browse 8 quotations connecting Samuel Johnson with Patience, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
Each quotation is included because its central idea connects with this theme, not simply because one matching word appears in the sentence.
Sources represented here include Rasselas, The Vanity of Human Wishes, The Idler. Keeping the work and source note beside each quotation makes differences in setting, speaker and emphasis easier to see.
Sources represented here include Rasselas, The Vanity of Human Wishes, The Idler.
“Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.”
Persistent effort combined with competence can overcome many barriers, although the wording stops short of claiming that every obstacle is conquerable.
Source note: Rasselas, Chapter XVIII; Imlac encourages the prince after acknowledging that strong restraints may still exist.
“Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.”
Large achievements often depend more on continued effort than on a single burst of power.
Source note: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia.
“Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed.”
The novel resists fantasies of perfect circumstances by emphasizing that difficulty follows people across different places and conditions.
Source note: Rasselas, Chapter XVI; spoken by Imlac while comparing European life with the travelers’ expectations of happiness.
“But improvement is naturally slow.”
The sentence cautions against expecting useful reform to produce immediate visible results, especially when ambitious projects confront ordinary constraints.
Source note: The Idler, No. 88; Johnson is discussing a fictional philosophical society whose grand plans meet the slow pace of practical improvement.
“there are lower degrees of constancy necessary to common virtue”
Johnson distinguishes heroic steadfastness from the smaller, repeated forms of constancy needed for ordinary moral life.
Source note: The Idler, No. 11; this paper is not among the numbers Johnson’s own advertisement excluded from his authorship.
“See Nations slowly wise, and meanly just; To buried Merit raise the tardy Bust.”
Johnson depicts public recognition and collective wisdom as delayed and imperfect, suggesting that societies may honor merit only after the person who deserved it is gone.
Source note: The Vanity of Human Wishes; part of the poem’s reflection on learning, public judgment and historical recognition.
“Pour forth thy Fervours for a healthful Mind, Obedient Passions, and a Will resign'd;”
Johnson’s closing prayer prioritizes soundness of mind, governed passions and a will capable of acceptance over many external forms of success.
Source note: The Vanity of Human Wishes, closing devotional passage; the terms belong to eighteenth-century Christian moral poetry and are not presented as modern medical advice.
“Still raise for Good the supplicating Voice, But leave to Heav'n the Measure and the Choice.”
The poem’s devotional close allows prayer for good while counseling humility about the exact form or measure in which that good should arrive.
Source note: The Vanity of Human Wishes, closing movement; Johnson shifts from satirical catalogues of disappointed ambition toward explicitly Christian devotional counsel.