The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: The Idler

Forside
J. Buckland [and 40 others], 1787

Inni boken

Innhold


Andre utgaver - Vis alle

Vanlige uttrykk og setninger

Populære avsnitt

Side 307 - I know none who have explained in what manner this rule is to be understood; the consequence of which is, that every one takes it in the most obvious sense, that objects are represented naturally when they have such relief that they seem real. It may appear strange, perhaps, to hear this sense of the rule disputed; but it must be considered, that, if the excellency...
Side 192 - The ambition of superior sensibility and 'superior eloquence disposes the lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and communicate it at another ; and each labours first to impose upon himself, and then to propagate the imposture.
Side 382 - None will flatter the poor, and the wise have very little power of flattering themselves. That man is surely the most wretched of the sons of wretchedness, who lives with his own faults and follies always before him, and who has none to reconcile him to himself by praise and veneration. I have long sought content, and have not found it ; I will from this moment endeavour to be rich.
Side 390 - Seventy years are allowed to man ; I have yet fifty remaining ; ten years I will allot to the attainment of knowledge, and ten I will pass in foreign countries...
Side 334 - But such is the present state of our literature, that the ancient sage, who thought a great book a great evil, would now think the multitude of books a multitude of evils. He would consider a bulky writer who engrossed a year, and a swarm of pamphleteers who stole each an hour, as equal wasters of human life, and would make no other difference between them, than between a beast of prey and a flight of locusts.
Side 49 - ... to the loiterer, who makes appointments which he never keeps; to the consulter, who asks advice which he never takes; to the boaster, who blusters only to be praised; to the complainer, who whines only to be pitied; to the projector, whose happiness is to entertain his friends with expectations which all but himself know to be vain; to the...
Side 169 - MEMORY is, among the faculties of the human mind, that of which we make the most frequent use, or rather that of which the agency is incessant or perpetual. Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation.
Side 297 - ... instead of giving up the reins of their imagination into their author's hands, their frigid minds are employed in examining whether the performance be according to the rules of art.
Side 20 - All foreigners remark, that the knowledge of the common people of England is greater than that of any other vulgar. This superiority we undoubtedly owe to the rivulets of intelligence, which are continually trickling among us, which every one may catch, and of which every one partakes.
Side 320 - ... he always annexes to the dove ; but, if he pretends to defend the preference he gives to one or the other by endeavouring to prove that this more beautiful form proceeds from a particular gradation of magnitude, undulation of a curve, or direction of a line, or whatever other conceit of his imagination he shall fix on as a criterion of form, he will be continually contradicting himself, and find at last that the great Mother of Nature will not be subjected to such narrow rules.

Bibliografisk informasjon