5 quotations linked to The Idler by or associated with Samuel Johnson, with source notes, explanations and related topics.
Patience, improvement, action, procrastination, custom, judgment, constancy and ordinary moral discipline.
Use these links when you want to inspect the wording in its wider work or edition.
“But improvement is naturally slow.”
The sentence cautions against expecting useful reform to produce immediate visible results, especially when ambitious projects confront ordinary constraints.
The Idler, No. 88; Johnson is discussing a fictional philosophical society whose grand plans meet the slow pace of practical improvement.
“Customs are not to be changed but for better.”
The maxim sets a burden on reform: novelty alone is not enough; a proposed change should be able to show a practical or rational advantage.
The Idler, No. 90; Johnson is discussing gesture and public speaking, not asserting that every inherited custom should remain untouched.
“We do not indeed so often disappoint others as ourselves.”
Private expectations can exceed what anyone else demands of us, so a life may feel disappointing chiefly by comparison with unfulfilled plans known only to oneself.
The Idler, No. 88; the surrounding paragraph concerns private hopes, proposed tasks and the gap between imagined achievement and lived action.
“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.
The Idler, No. 11; this paper is not among the numbers Johnson’s own advertisement excluded from his authorship.
“we have suffered our purposes to sleep till the time of action is past”
Johnson describes procrastination as allowing intended work to remain dormant until the opportunity to act has disappeared.
The Idler, No. 88; this clause comes from Johnson’s reflection on private ambitions that remain unfinished while days and years pass.
