Samuel Johnson Quotes About Labor

• Exercise is labor without weariness.

  Samuel Johnson

  Fitness, Exercise, Labor

• Such are the vicissitudes of the world, through all its parts, that day and night, labor and rest, hurry and retirement, endear each other; such are the changes that keep the mind in action: we desire, we pursue, we obtain, we are satiated; we desire something else and begin a new pursuit.

  Samuel Johnson

  Change, Retirement, Night

  Samuel Johnson (1784). “The Rambler: In Four Volumes..”, p.35

• Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.

  Samuel Johnson

  Encouragement, Hard Work, Excellence

• You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money to those who work, as the recompense of their labor, than when you give money merely in charity.

  Samuel Johnson

  Giving, Charity, Pay

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1866). “The Life of Samuel Johnson”, p.33

• The ambition of superior sensibility and superior eloquence disposes the lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and communicate it at another; and each labors first to impose upon himself and then to propagate the imposture.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Ambition, Criticism

  Samuel Johnson, William Page (1860). “Life and Writings”, p.311

• Long customs are not easily broken; he that attempts to change the course of his own life very often labors in vain; and how shall we do that for others, which we are seldom able to do for ourselves.

  Samuel Johnson

  Long, Broken, Able

  Samuel Johnson (1856). “Rasselas”, p.54

• ...it will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Poet, Labor

  Samuel Johnson (1854). “Lives of the British Poets: In Four Volumes”, p.244

• The labor of rising from the ground will be great, ... but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall.

  Samuel Johnson

  Fall, Men, Air

  Samuel Johnson (1940). “The reader's Johnson: a representative selection from his writings”

• Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take care of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.

  Samuel Johnson

  Life, Struggle, Men

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (letter to Lord Chesterfield, 7 Feb. 1755)

• Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle; for the calamities of life, like the necessities of Nature, are calls to labor and diligence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Patience, Struggle, May

  Samuel Johnson (1811). “Works”, p.184

• To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

  Samuel Johnson

  Ambition, Home, Desire

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1837). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius /c by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.112

• Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.

  Samuel Johnson

  Ignorance, Supposing That, People

  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.460

• Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

  Samuel Johnson

  Inspirational, Power, Expectations

• As the mind must govern the hands, so in every society the man of intelligence must direct the man of labor.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Hands, Intelligence

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1801). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.”, p.317

• The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another.

  Samuel Johnson

  Expectations, Novelty, Jest

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.5

• Labor, if it were not necessary for existence, would be indispensable for the happiness of man.

  Samuel Johnson

  Happiness, Men, Would Be

• He that never labors may know the pains of idleness, but not the pleasures.

  Samuel Johnson

  Pain, Relaxation, May

• Labor's face is wrinkled with the wind, and swarthy with the sun.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wind, Faces, Sun

• Turn on the prudent
  Ant, thy heedful eyes,
  Observe her labours,
  Sluggard, and be wise.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wise, Eye, Laziness

  "The poems of Samuel Johnson".

• An Italian philosopher said that "time was his estate"; an estate indeed which will produce nothing without cultivation, but will always abundantly repay the labors of industry, and generally satisfy the most extensive desires, if no part of it be suffered to lie in waste by negligence, to be overrun with noxious plants, or laid out for show rather than for use.

  Samuel Johnson

  Lying, Italian, Desire

• The prosperity of a people is proportionate to the number of hands and minds usefully employed. To the community, sedition is a fever, corruption is a gangrene, and idleness is an atrophy. Whatever body or society wastes more than it acquires, must gradually decay, and every being that continues to be fed, and eases to labor, takes away something from the public stock.

  Samuel Johnson

  Hands, Numbers, People

• Such is the constitution of Man that labor may be said to be its own re-ward.

  Samuel Johnson

  Exercise, Men, May

• At length weariness succeeds to labor, and the mind lies at ease in the contemplation of her own attainments without any desire of new conquests or excursions. This is the age of recollection and narrative; the opinions are settled, and the avenues of apprehension shut against any new intelligence; the days that are to follow must pass in the inculcation of precepts already collected, and assertion of tenets already received; nothing is henceforward so odious as opposition, so insolent as doubt, or so dangerous as novelty.

  Samuel Johnson

  Lying, Doubt, Mind

  Samuel Johnson (2003). “Selected Essays”, p.380, Penguin UK

• For life affords no higher pleasure, than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified. He that labours in any great or laudable undertaking, has his fatigues first supported by hope, and afterwards rewarded by joy... To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

  Samuel Johnson

  Motivational, Joy, Wish

  "The Wisdom of the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler".

• Wheresoe'er I turn my view,
  All is strange, yet nothing new:
  Endless labor all along,
  Endless labor to be wrong:
  Phrase that Time has flung away;
  Uncouth words in disarray,
  Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet,
  Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.

  Samuel Johnson

  Views, Poetry, Phrases

  Tobias George Smollett, Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith (1810). “The Poetical Works of Doctors Smollett, Johnson, and Goldsmith”, p.113

You May Also Like:

James Boswell

Dick Clark

Alexander Pope

Joshua Reynolds

John Milton

Jonathan Swift

Oliver Goldsmith