Samuel Johnson Quotes on Happiness
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Come, let me know what it is that makes a Scotchman happy!
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With these celestial Wisdom calms the mind, And makes the happiness she does not find.
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Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, of sickness, or captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable; nor does it appear that the happiest lot of terrestrial existence can set us above the want of this general blessing; or that life, when the gifts of nature and of fortune are accumulated upon it, would not still be wretched, were it not elevated and delighted by the expectation of some new possession, of some enjoyment yet behind, by which the wish shall at last be satisfied, and the heart filled up to its utmost extent.
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Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments; any enlargement of wishes is therefore equally destructive to happiness with the diminution of possession, and he that teaches another to long for what he never shall obtain is no less an enemy to his quiet than if he had robbed him of part of his patrimony.
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The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be renewed by intervals of absence.
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Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance.
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It is seldom that we find either men or places such as we expect them. ... Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.
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Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed.
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There is in this world no real delight (excepting those of sensuality), but exchange of ideas in conversation.
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Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.
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There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.
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Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.