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Hope Quotes by Samuel Johnson

45 Hope quotes by Samuel Johnson

All Hope quotes Samuel Johnson’s page

Samuel Johnson treats hope as a kind of happiness that can lift a weary mind, even if it sometimes deceives. He observes that public libraries reveal how fragile human hopes can be, and he warns that hope without reason may become an empty amusement. Still, he believes a modest hope is better than none.

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“A second marriage is a triumph of hope over experience.”

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Hope is itself a species of happiness...

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In all pleasures hope is a considerable part.

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The hopes of zeal are not wholly groundless.

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Hope is necessary in every condition.

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The triumph of hope over experience.

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All industry must be excited by hope.

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Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler.

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When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.

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The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

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Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former…

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Hope is an amusement rather than a good, and adapted to none but very tranquil minds.

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“What we hope ever to do with ease, we must first learn to do with diligence.”

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No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.

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What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

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A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately after his wife died; it was the triumph of hope over…

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No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library; for who can see the…

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They who have already enjoyed the crowds and noise of the great city, know their desire to return is little more than…

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So scanty is our present allowance of happiness that in many situations life could scarcely be supported if hope were not allowed…

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Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favour, which an artful flatterer may…

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“Do not disturb your mind,” said Imlac, “with other hopes or fears than reason may suggest; if you are pleased with the…

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We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to…

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Hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords; but, like all other pleasures immoderately…

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Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent,…

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But the distant hope of being one day useful or eminent ought not to mislead us too far from that study which…

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Few of those who fill the world with books, have any pretensions to the hope either of pleasing or instructing. They have…

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The student who would build his knowledge on solid foundations, and proceed by just degrees to the pinnacles of truth, is directed…

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In the condition of men, it frequently happens that grief and anxiety lie hid under the golden robes of prosperity; and the…

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Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed; but while the soul and body continue united, it can…

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When I find that so much of my life has stolen unprofitably away, and that I can descry by retrospection scarcely a…

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There is such a difference between the pursuits of men in great cities that one part of the inhabitants lives to little…

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To scatter praise or blame without regard to justice is to destroy the distinction of good and evil. Many have no other…

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Where there is no hope there can be no endeavor

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It is necessary to hope... for hope itself is happiness.

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In all pleasure hope is a considerable part

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When there is no hope, there can be no endeavor.

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With what hope can we endeavor to persuade the ladies that the time spent at the toilet is lost in vanity.

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We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled…

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Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately…

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We all live upon the hope of pleasing somebody, and the pleasure of pleasing ought to be greatest, and at last always…

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More by Samuel Johnson

The size of a man's understanding might always be justly measured by his mirth.

Pound St. Paul's Church into atoms, and consider any single atom; it is to be sure, good for nothing; but put all these atoms…

You can never be wise unless you love reading.

If our aim is to praise, we should forget to criticize; if our aim is to criticize, we should remember to praise

All theory is against free will; all experience is for it.

Had I learned to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.

It is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the chastity of a wife.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it…

The basis of all excellence is truth: he that professes love ought to feel its power.

Words are daughters of earth but ideas are sons of heaven.

“The composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelting…

“The cherubim were never intended as an object of worship, because they were only the appendices to another thing. But a thing is then…

Nobody has the right to put another under such a difficulty that he must either hurt the person by telling the truth or hurt…

That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own self-esteem

The time will come to every human being when it must be known how well he can bear to die.