Samuel Johnson Quotes About Hope

• The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

  Samuel Johnson

  Happiness, Uplifting, Hope

  Samuel Johnson (1820). “The Rambler”, p.8

• Hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords; but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain.

  Samuel Johnson

  Hope, Pain, Excess

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1799). “Boswell's Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides, and Johnson's Diary of A Journey Into North Wales”, p.426

• Hope is necessary in every condition.

  Samuel Johnson

  Hope, Anticipation, Conditions

  The Rambler No. 67

• Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage.

  Samuel Johnson

  Hope, Courage

• When there is no hope, there can be no endeavor.

  Samuel Johnson

  Hope, Endeavor, No Hope

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 375-78, The Rambler No. 110, 1922.

• The triumph of hope over experience.

  Samuel Johnson

  Marriage, Funny Love, Hope

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 1770)

• In all pleasures hope is a considerable part.

  Samuel Johnson

  Inspirational, Hope, Hopeful

  Samuel Johnson, James Boswell (1807). “Dr. Johnson's table-talk: aphorisms [&c.] selected and arranged from mr. Boswell's life of Johnson”, p.36

• 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.

  Samuel Johnson

  Hope, Frustration, Extinction

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy, Francis Pearson Walesby (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D..: The Adventurer and Idler”, p.322

• Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable.

  Samuel Johnson

  Hope, Comfort, Captivity

  The Rambler No. 67

• When I find that so much of my life has stolen unprofitably away, and that I can descry by retrospection scarcely a few single days properly and vigorously employed, why do I yet try to resolve again? I try, because reformation is necessary and despair is criminal. I try, in humble hope of the help of God.

  Samuel Johnson

  Life, Hope, Humble

  "The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D".

• I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian.

  Samuel Johnson

  Hope, Cheating, Thinking

  Referring to 'Ossian' in a letter to James Macpherson, 20 January 1775: James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 2, p. 298

• Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.

  Samuel Johnson

  Hope, Schemes, Merriment

  'The Idler' no. 58 (26 May 1759)

• No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.

  Samuel Johnson

  Hope, Vanity, Expectations

  'The Rambler' no. 106 (23 March 1751)

• Hope is an amusement rather than a good, and adapted to none but very tranquil minds.

  Samuel Johnson

  Hope, Mind, Amusement

  Samuel Johnson (1836). “Johnsoniana: Or, Supplement to Boswell: Being Anecdotes and Sayings of Dr. Johnson”, p.61

• Do not ... hope wholly to reason away your troubles; do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind.

  Samuel Johnson

  Death, Hope, Sunshine

  Samuel Johnson (2014). “The Letters of Samuel Johnson, Volume II: 1773-1776”, p.299, Princeton University Press

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