Local historian creates special pin badges featuring famous Lichfield figure
#samueljohnson
A quotation from Samuel Johnson
It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1758-06-24), The Idler, No. 11
More about this quote: wist.info/johnson-samuel/20468…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #samueljohnson #chitchat #conversation #discussion #English #meeting #socializing #topic #weather
A quotation from Samuel Johnson
But when thoughts and words are collected and adjusted, and the whole composition at last concluded, it seldom gratifies the author, when he comes coolly and deliberately to review it, with the hopes which had been excited in the fury of the performance: novelty always captivates the mind; as our thoughts rise fresh upon us, we readily believe them just and original, which, when the pleasure of production is over, we find to be mean and common, or borrowed from the works of others, and supplied by memory rather than invention.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1754-03-02), The Adventurer, No. 138
More about this quote: wist.info/johnson-samuel/81911…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #samueljohnson #author #creativity #disappointment #editing #novelty #originality #plagiarism #repetition #review #selfconsciousness #selfcriticism #selfdefeat #selfdeprecation #selfdoubt #selfjudgment #selfopinion #selfreflection #selfsabotage #writing
A quotation from Samuel Johnson
Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1754-03-02), The Adventurer, No. 138
More about this quote: wist.info/johnson-samuel/25299…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #samueljohnson #author #distraction #drudgery #essayist #novelist #storyteller #writing #writer
A quotation from Samuel Johnson
But there is a higher order of men so inspired with ardour, and so fortified with resolution, that the world passes before them without influence or regard: these ought to consider themselves as appointed the guardians of mankind: they are placed in an evil world, to exhibit publick examples of good life; and may be said, when they withdraw to solitude, to desert the station which Providence assigned them.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1754-01-19), The Adventurer, No. 126
More about this quote: wist.info/johnson-samuel/81627…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #samueljohnson #ardor #exemplar #goodlife #greatperson #greatness #hero #leader #passion #resolution #example
A quotation from Samuel Johnson
Even the acquisition of knowledge is often much facilitated by the advantages of society: he that never compares his notions with those of others, readily acquiesces in his first thoughts, and very seldom discovers the objections which may be raised against his opinions; he, therefore, often thinks himself in possession of truth, when he is only fondling an errour long since exploded. He that has neither companions nor rivals in his studies, will always applaud his own progress, and think highly of his performances, because he knows not that others have equalled or excelled him. And I am afraid it may be added, that the student who withdraws himself from the world, will soon feel that ardour extinguished which praise or emulation had enkindled, and take the advantage of secrecy to sleep, rather than to labour.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1754-01-19), The Adventurer, No. 126
More about this quote: wist.info/johnson-samuel/81496…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #samueljohnson #study #studygroup #argument #collaboration #company #debate #education #error #interaction #isolation #learning #motivation #realitycheck #selfcongratulations #selfcontrol #selfcorrection #selfcriticism #selfdeception #selfdelusion #selfeducation #selfmotivation #selfpolicing #selfpraising #selfrationalization #selfrighteousness #selfsufficiency #society #solitude #truth
There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.
-- Samuel Johnson
A quotation from Samuel Johnson
But though learning may be conferred by solitude, its application must be attained by general converse. He has learned to no purpose, that is not able to teach; and he will always teach unsuccessfully, who cannot recommend his sentiments by his diction or address.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1754-01-19), The Adventurer, No. 126
More about this quote: wist.info/johnson-samuel/81303…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #samueljohnson #clarity #communication #education #interaction #learning #solitude #teaching
A quotation from Samuel Johnson
The greater part of the admirers of solitude, as of all other classes of mankind, have no higher or remoter view, than the present gratification of their passions. Of these, some, haughty and impetuous, fly from society only because they cannot bear to repay to others the regard which themselves exact; and think no state of life eligible, but that which places them out of the reach of censure or control, and affords them opportunities of living in a perpetual compliance with their own inclinations, without the necessity of regulating their actions by any other man’s convenience or opinion.
There are others, of minds more delicate and tender, easily offended by every deviation from rectitude, soon disgusted by ignorance or impertinence, and always expecting from the conversation of mankind more elegance, purity and truth, than the mingled mass of life will easily afford. Such men are in haste to retire from grossness, falsehood and brutality; and hope to find in private habitations at least a negative felicity, an exemption from the shocks and perturbations with which publick scenes are continually distressing them.
To neither of these votaries will solitude afford that content, which she has been taught so lavishly to promise. The man of arrogance will quickly discover, that by escaping from his opponents he has lost his flatterers, that greatness is nothing where it is not seen, and power nothing where it cannot be felt: and he, whose faculties are employed in too close an observation of failings and defects, will find his condition very little mended by transferring his attention from others to himself: he will probably soon come back in quest of new objects, and be glad to keep his captiousness employed on any character rather than his own.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1754-01-19), The Adventurer, No. 126
More about this quote: wist.info/johnson-samuel/81166…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #samueljohnson #alone #isolation #misanthropy #privacy #retirement #selfawareness #selfindulgence #society #solitude #withdrawal #vacation
"If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read."
#SamuelJohnson
"Have plenty of #books around you, he advised Boswell, so that you can follow up the desire of the moment"
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/out-margins/new-year-readers-resolutions
A quotation from Samuel Johnson
To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer: but he whose life has passed without a contest, and who can boast neither success nor merit, can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence; and if he is content with his own character, must owe his satisfaction to insensibility.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1753-11-27), The Adventurer, No. 111
More about this quote: wist.info/johnson-samuel/81034…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #samueljohnson #achievement #ambition #challenge #deserving #difficulty #happiness #merit #satisfaction #selfsatisfaction #selfworth #striving #success
A quotation from Samuel Johnson
Yet it is certain, likewise, that many of our miseries are merely comparative: we are often made unhappy, not by the presence of any real evil, but by the absence of some fictitious good; of something which is not required by any real want of nature, which has not in itself any power of gratification, and which neither reason nor fancy would have prompted us to wish, did we not see it in the possession of others.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1753-11-27), The Adventurer, No. 111
More about this quote: wist.info/johnson-samuel/80903…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #samueljohnson #comparison #desire #discontent #envy #gratification #jealousy #keepingupwiththejoneses #lack #misery #resentment #unhappiness #want
“I cannot well repeat how there I entered”*…
Domenico di Michelino, La Divina Commedia di Dante, 1465 — SourceA collection– and consideration– of the illustrations inspired by Dante’s The Divine Comedy…
A man wakes deep in the woods, halfway through life. Far from home, unpermitted to return, his heart pierced by grief. He has strayed from the path. It’s a dark night of the soul, his crisis so great that death becomes a tempting end. And then, as wild beasts advance upon this easy prey, his prayers are answered. A guide appears, promising to show him the way toward paradise…
[This month] marks the seventh centenary of Dante Alighieri’s death, the Florentine poet who wrote The Divine Comedy, arguably our most ambitious Western epic. Eschewing Latin, the medieval currency of literature and scholarship, Dante wrote in his vernacular tongue, establishing the foundations for a standardized Italian language, and, by doing so, may have laid cultural groundwork for the unification of Italy.
The poet’s impact on literature cannot be overstated. “Dante’s influence was massive”, writes Erich Auerbach, “he singlehandedly established the expressive possibilities and the landscape of all poetry to come, and he did so virtually out of thin air”. And just as the classical Virgil served as Dante’s guide through the Inferno, Dante became a kind of Virgil for later writers. Chaucer cribbed his rhythm and images, while Milton’s Paradise Lost may have been actually lost, were it not for Dante as a shepherd. The Divina Commedia is a touchstone for works as diverse as fifteenth-century Castilian and Catalan verse; Gogol’s Dead Souls (1842); and Mary Shelley’s Italian Rambles (1844), which finds the poet at every turn:
There is scarcely a spot in Tuscany, and those parts of the North of Italy, which he visited, that Dante has not described in poetry that brings the very spot before your eyes, adorned with graces missed by the prosaic eye, and which are exact and in perfect harmony with the scene.
If Dante’s poetry summons landscapes before its reader’s eyes, artists have tried, for the last seven hundred years, to achieve another kind of evocation: rendering the Commedia in precise images, evocative patterns, and dazzling color. By Jean-Pierre Barricelli’s estimate, a complete catalogue of Commedia-inspired artworks would exceed 1,100 names. The earliest dated image comes from Florence in 1337, beginning the tradition soon after the poet’s death in 1321. Before long, there were scores of other illustrations…
A thoughtful consideration and a glorious collection: “700 Years of Dante’s Divine Comedy in Art,” from @PublicDomainRev.
* Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
###
As we visualize, we might send well-worded birthday greetings to Samuel Johnson; he was born on this date in 1709. A poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer, Johnson’s best-known work was surely A Dictionary of the English Language, which he published in 1755, after nine years work– and which served as the standard for 150 years (until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary). But Dr. Johnson, as he was known, is probably best remembered as the subject of what Walter Jackson Bate noted is “the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature”: James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson. A famous aphorist, Johnson was the very opposite of a man he described to Boswell in 1784: “He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dullness in others.”
Apropos Dante, Johnson observed “if what happens does not make us richer, we must welcome it if it makes us wiser.”
Joshua Reynolds’ portrait of Dr. Johnson#ADictionaryOfTheEnglishLanguage #art #biography #Dante #DanteAlighieri #Dictionary #history #illustration #JamesBoswell #language #LifeOfSamuelJohnson #literature #MaryShelley #poetry #SamuelJohnson #TheDivineComedy
A quotation from Samuel Johnson
The evils inseparably annexed to the present condition of man, are so numerous and afflictive, that it has been, from age to age, the task of some to bewail, and of others to solace them; and he, therefore, will be in danger of seeing a common enemy, who shall attempt to depreciate the few pleasures and felicities which nature has allowed us.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1753-11-27), The Adventurer, No. 111
More about this quote: wist.info/johnson-samuel/80774…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #samueljohnson #affliction #buzzkill #enjoyment #evils #happiness #humancondition #moralist #partypooper #partying #pleasure #Puritan #relief #scold #strictness #suffering #fun
A quotation from Samuel Johnson
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes, and seeing them gratified. He that labours in any great or laudable undertaking, has his fatigues first supported by hope, and afterwards rewarded by joy; he is always moving to a certain end, and when he has attained it, an end more distant invites him to a new pursuit.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1753-11-27), The Adventurer, No. 111
More about this quote: wist.info/johnson-samuel/2135/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #samueljohnson #accomplishment #difficulty #effort #gratification #greatworks #joy #life #living #pleasure #success
A quotation from Samuel Johnson
Happiness is enjoyed only in proportion as it is known; and such is the state or folly of man, that it is known only by experience of its contrary: we who have long lived amidst the conveniencies of a town immensely populous, have scarce an idea of a place where desire cannot be gratified by money. In order to have a just sense of this artificial plenty, it is necessary to have passed some time in a distant colony, or those parts of our island which are thinly inhabited: he that has once known how many trades every man in such situations is compelled to exercise, with how much labour the products of nature must be accommodated to human use, how long the loss or defect of any common utensil must be endured, or by what awkward expedients it must be supplied, how far men may wander with money in their hands before any can sell them what they wish to buy, will know how to rate at its proper value the plenty and ease of a great city.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1753-06-26), The Adventurer, No. 67
More about this quote: wist.info/johnson-samuel/80433…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #samueljohnson #countryside #trade #city #civilization #convenience #happiness #hardwork #luxury #money #purchase #rural #unhappiness #urban
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
-- Samuel Johnson
The Guardian's Poem of The Week is
On the Death of Dr Robert Levet by Samuel Johnson
Condemned to Hope’s delusive mine
As on we toil from day to day,
By sudden blast or slow decline,
Our social comforts drop away.
Well tried through many a varying year,
See Levet to the grave descend;
Officious, innocent, sincere,
Of every friendless name the friend.
Yet still he fills Affection’s eye,
Obscurely wise, and coarsely kind;
Nor, lettered Arrogance, deny
Thy praise to merit unrefined.
When fainting Nature called for aid,
And hovering Death prepared the blow,
His vigorous remedy displayed
The power of art without the show.
In Misery’s darkest cavern known,
His useful care was ever nigh,
Where hopeless Anguish poured his groan,
And lonely Want retired to die.
No summons mocked by chill delay,
No petty gain disdained by pride,
The modest wants of every day
The toil of every day supplied...
#SamuelJohnson #Elegy #Poetry #PoemofTheWeek #Reading #TheGuardian
“In his excitement at the prospect of the examined life Boswell invented modern biography. He wrote like hell, and the full fragrance, the authentic buzz, of his own life and period, such as it was, rises with Flemish exactness from every other sentence he chose to write down.”
—Andrew O’Hagan’s celebration of James Boswell in the London Review of Books, 5 Oct 2000
5/5
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v22/n19/andrew-o-hagan/self-hugging
#Scottish #literature #JamesBoswell #SamuelJohnson #18thCentury #biography
“A fool can utter a brilliant sentence but it seems quite rare for a fool to be able to write an admirable biography of seven or eight hundred pages”
Jorge Luis Borges asks, was Boswell just a lucky idiot? Or is his “Samuel Johnson” a brilliant literary creation?
4/5
https://www.nybooks.com/online/2013/07/28/lecture-johnson-and-boswell/
#Scottish #literature #JamesBoswell #SamuelJohnson #18thCentury #biography #Borges
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