Adventurer
No. 115: “No man is a rhetorician or philosopher by chance.” [pg95, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
No. 138: “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.” [pg98, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
Idler
No. 103: “Much of the pain and pleasure of mankind arises from the conjectures which everyone makes o the thoughts of others.” [pg20, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
“Succession is not perceived but by variation”
No. 23: “Yet two minds will seldom be found together, which can at once subdue their discontent, or immediately enjoy the sweets of peace, without remembering the wounds of the conflict” [pg39, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
“The most fatal diesease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly encreased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.” [pg39, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
No. 27: “Many indeed alter their conduct, and are not at fifty what they were at thirty, but they commonly varied imperceptibly from themselves, followed the train of external causes, and rather suffered reformation than made it.” [pg45, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
No. 63: “The Natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety” [pg100, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
Rambler
No.24: “The great fault of men of learning still, that they offend against this rule, and appear willing to study anything rather than themselves.”[pg23, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
No. 32: “When we feel any pressure of distress, we are not to conclude that we can only obey the will of heaven by languishing under it, any more than when we perceive the pain of thirst we are to imagine that water is prohibited” [pg28, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
No. 47: “The other passions are diseases indeed, but they necessarily direct us to their proper cure.”[pg31, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
“Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past , without looking forward to the future, an incessant wish that something were otherwise than it has been, a tormenting and harassing want of some enjoyment or possession which we have lost and which no endeavors can possibly regain.” [pg31, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
“An attempt to preserve life in a state of neutrality and indifference, is unreasonable and vain. If by excluding joy we could shutout grief, the scheme would deserve very serious attention;” [pg32, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
“The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment.” [pg33, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
No. 72: “It is well known that the most certain way to give anyman pleasure, is to persuade him that you receive pleasure from him, to encourager him to freedom and confidence, and to avoid any such appearance of superiority as may overbear and depress him.” [pg35, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
“Good humour is indeed generally degraded by the characters in which it is found;” [pg36, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
“For admiration ceases with novelty, and interest gains its end and retires.” [pg37, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
No. 134: “Idleness never can secure tranquility; the call of reason and of conscience will pierce the closest pavilion of the sluggard, and, though it may not force to drive him from his down, will be loud enough to hinder him from sleep. Those moments which he cannot resolve to make useful by devoting them to the great business of his being, will still be usurped by powers that will not leave them to his disposal; remorse and vexation will seize upon them and forbid him to enjoy what he is so desirous to appropriate.”[pg42, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
“He that hopes in the same house to obtain every convenience, may draw plans and study Palladio, but will never lay a stone.” [pg42, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
“He who is cut off in the execution of an honest undertaking, has at least the honor of falling in his rank, and has fought the battle, though he missed the victory.” [pg43, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
No. 8: “Irregular desires will produce licentious practices; what men will allow themselves to wish they will soon believe, and will be at last incited to execute what they please themselves with contriving”[pg47, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
“For thoughts are only criminal, when they are first chosen, and then voluntarily continued.” [pg49, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
No.28: “One sophism by which men persuade themselves that they have those virtues which they really want, is formed by the substitution of single acts for habits.”[pg52, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
“But this precept may be often frustrated; for it seldom happens that rivals or opponents are suffered to come near enough to know our conduct with so much exactness as that conscience should allow and reflect the accusation.”[pg53, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
No.31: “Men who cannot deceive others are very often successful in deceiving themselves.” [pg58, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
No.131:”Of the various arts by which riches may be obtained, the greater part are at the first view irreconcilable with the laws of virtue; some are openly flagitious, and practised not only in neglect, but in defiance of faith and justice; and the rest are on every side so entangled with dubious tendencies, and so beset with perpetual temptation, that very few, even of those who are not yet abandoned, are able to preserve their innocence, or can produce any other claim to pardon than that they deviated from the right less than others and have sooner and more diligently endeavored to return.”[pg69, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
No.14:”It is, however necessary for the idea of perfection to be proposed, that we may have some object to which our endeavors are to be directed;”[pg72, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
“When he desires to gain the belief of others, he should shew that he believes himself.”[pg72, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
No.16: “I am now, Mr. Rambler, known to be an author, and am condemned, irreversibly condemned, to all the miseries of high reputation.”[pg76, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
No. 125: “It is impossible to impress upon our minds an adequate and just representation of a object so great that we can never take it into our view, or so mutable that it is always changing under our eye, and has already lost its form while we are labouring to conceive it.”[pg79, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
No.137: ”To expect that the intricacies of science will be pierced by a careless glance, or the eminence of fame ascended without labour, is to expect a peculiar privilege, a power denied to the rest of mankind.”[pg85, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
“An elevated genius employed in little things, appears, to use the simile of Longinus, like the sun in his evening declination, he remits his splendor but retains his magnitude, and pleases more, though he dazzles less.”[pg87, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
No.18: ”All whom I have mentioned failed to obtain happiness, for want of considering that marriage is the strictest type of perpetual friendship; that there can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity; and that he must expect to be wretched, who pays to beauty, riches, or politeness, that regard which only virtue and piety can claim.”[pg106, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
No.45: “Every man recounts the inconveniences of his own station, and thinks those of any other less, because he has not felt them”[pg112, Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]
No.114: “The frequency of capital punishments therefore rarely hinders the commission of a crime, but naturally and commonly prevents its detection, and is, if we proceed only upon prudential principles, chiefly for that reason to be avoided.”[pg300], Samuel Johnson Selected Works, Demaria, Fix, Weinbrot. Yale Edition]