Samuel Johnson Quotes About Consciousness

• To see helpless infancy stretching out her hands, and pouring out her cries in testimony of dependence, without any powers to alarm jealousy, or any guilt to alienate affection, must surely awaken tenderness in every human mind; and tenderness once excited will be hourly increased by the natural contagion of felicity, by the repercussion of communicated pleasure, by the consciousness of dignity of benefaction.

  Samuel Johnson

  Hands, Mind, Guilt

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.47

• It is not indeed certain, that the most refined caution will find a proper time for bringing a man to the knowledge of his own failing, or the most zealous benevolence reconcile him to that judgment by which they are detected; but he who endeavours only the happiness of him whom he reproves will always have either the satisfaction of obtaining or deserving kindness; if he succeeds, he benefits his friend; and if he fails, he has at least the consciousness that he suffers for only doing well.

  Samuel Johnson

  Kindness, Men, Advice

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1857). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.74

• To excite opposition and inflame malevolence is the unhappy privilege of courage made arrogant by consciousness of strength.

  Samuel Johnson

  Arrogance, Unhappy, Privilege

  Samuel Johnson (1827). “The Rambler”, p.32

• Disease generally begins that equality which death completes; the distinctions which set one man so much above another are very little perceived in the gloom of a sick chamber, where it will be vain to expect entertainment from the gay, or instruction from the wise; where all human glory is obliterated, the wit is clouded, the reasoner perplexed, and the hero subdued; where the highest and brightest of mortal beings finds nothing left him but the consciousness of innocence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wise, Hero, Gay

  Samuel Johnson (1784). “The Rambler: In Four Volumes..”, p.290

• Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

  Samuel Johnson

  Consciousness, Multiplicity

  In James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 2, p. 9 (February 1766)

• No evil is insupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong.

  Samuel Johnson

  Evil, Consciousness

  Samuel Johnson (1977). “Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.126, Univ of California Press

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