Samuel Johnson Quotes about Joy

The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence.

The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence.

Diversity, Joy, Life Is

Samuel Johnson (1787). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with His Life, and Notes on His Lives of the Poets, by Sir John Hawkins, Knt. In Eleven Volumes ...”, p.156

The joy of life is variety.

Samuel Johnson

Joy, Life Is, Joy Of Life

"The Idler" No. 39. Essay by Samuel Johnson, www.gutenberg.org. January 13, 1759.

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.

Samuel Johnson

Happiness, Men, Joy

John Hawkesworth, Samuel Johnson, Richard Bathurst, Joseph Warton (1793). “The Adventurer”, p.216

The fiction of happiness is propagated by every tongue and confirmed by every look till at last all profess the joy which they do not feel and consent to yield to the general delusion.

Samuel Johnson

Happiness, Yield, Joy

Samuel Johnson (1800). “The Idler: With Additional Essays”, p.63

For 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... To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

Samuel Johnson

Motivational, Joy, Wish

"The Wisdom of the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler".

Enlarge my life with multitude of days, In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays; Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know, That life protracted is protracted woe. Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the passages of joy.

Samuel Johnson

Time, Joy, Woe

'The Vanity of Human Wishes' (1749) l. 255

The gratification of curiosity rather frees us from uneasiness than confers pleasure; we are more pained by ignorance than delighted by instruction. Curiosity is the thirst of the soul; it inflames and torments us, and makes us taste every thing with joy, however otherwise insipid, by which it may be quenched.

Samuel Johnson

Ignorance, Joy, Soul

Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1836). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: with an essay on his life and genius”, p.163