Samuel Johnson Quotes About Meditation

• No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library; for who can see the wall crowded on every side by mighty volumes, the works of laborious meditations and accurate inquiry, now scarcely known but by the catalogue.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wall, Writing, Vanity

  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.167

• A man, doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote enquiries.

  Samuel Johnson

  Food, Men, Meditation

  'The Lives of the English Poets' (1779-81) 'Collins'

• The imaginations excited by the view of an unknown and untravelled wilderness are not such as arise in the artificial solitude of parks and gardens... The phantoms which haunt a desert are want, and misery, and danger; the evils of dereliction rush upon the thoughts; man is made unwillingly acquainted with his own weakness, and meditation shows him only how little he can sustain, and how little he can perform.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Garden, Views

  Samuel Johnson (1824). “Works: With an Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.255

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