5 quotations linked to The Vanity of Human Wishes by or associated with Samuel Johnson, with source notes, explanations and related topics.
Learning, ambition, history, delayed recognition, prayer, patience, self-command and the uncertainty of human wishes.
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“And pause awhile from Learning to be wise;”
Johnson distinguishes accumulating learning from exercising judgment, asking the scholar to interrupt pursuit of knowledge long enough to examine what wisdom requires.
Source note: The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), Johnson’s imitation of Juvenal’s Tenth Satire; the line introduces a section on the hazards and disappointments surrounding learned ambition.
“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.
“There mark what Ills the Scholar's Life assail; Toil, Envy, Want, the Garret, and the Jail.”
The poem refuses to romanticize scholarship by listing labor, envy, poverty and danger among the possible companions of intellectual ambition.
Source note: The Vanity of Human Wishes; the couplet follows Johnson’s invitation to pause from learning to be wise and belongs to a cautionary satire on human wishes.
“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.