The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An Essay on His Life and Genius, Volume 3

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Luke Hansard & Sons, 1810
 

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Page 366 - To live according to nature, is to act always with due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and effects ; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of universal felicity ; to co-operate with the general disposition and tendency of the present system of things.
Page 320 - is much to be desired; but I am afraid that no man will be able to breathe in these regions of speculation and tranquillity.
Page 304 - ... frequented by every fowl whom nature has taught to dip the wing in water. This lake discharged its superfluities by a stream which entered a dark cleft of the mountain on the northern side, and fell with dreadful noise from precipice to precipice till it was heard no more.
Page 128 - Just in the gate and in the jaws of hell, Revengeful Cares and sullen Sorrows dwell, And pale Diseases, and repining Age, Want, Fear, and Famine's unresisted rage; Here Toils, and Death, and Death's half-brother, Sleep, Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep; With anxious Pleasures of a guilty mind, Deep Frauds before, and open Force behind; The Furies' iron beds; and Strife, that shakes Her hissing tresses and unfolds her snakes.
Page 311 - The old man was surprised at this new species of affliction, and knew not what to reply, yet was unwilling to be silent. "Sir," said he, "if you had seen the miseries of the world, you would know how to value your present state." "Now," said the prince, "you have given me something to desire; I shall long to see the miseries of the world, since the sight of them is necessary to happiness.
Page 385 - No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of the spring : no man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source and from the mouth of the Nile.
Page 436 - No disease of the imagination,' answered Imlac, 'is so difficult of cure as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt: fancy and conscience then act interchangeably upon us, and so often shift their places that the illusions of one are not distinguished from the dictates of the other. If fancy presents images not moral or religious, the mind drives them away when they give it pain, but when...
Page 331 - Being now resolved to be a poet, I saw every thing with a new purpose ; my sphere of attention was suddenly magnified : no kind of knowledge was to be overlooked. I ranged mountains and deserts for images and resemblances, and pictured upon my mind every tree of the forest and flower of the valley.
Page 309 - With observations like these the prince amused himself as he returned, uttering them with a plaintive voice, yet with a look that discovered him to feel some complacence in his own perspicacity, and to receive some solace of the miseries of life, from consciousness of the delicacy with which he felt, and the eloquence with which he bewailed them.

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