Samuel Johnson Quotes About Uncertainty

• It is very natural for young men to be vehement, acrimonious and severe. For as they seldom comprehend at once all the consequences of a position, or perceive the difficulties by which cooler and more experienced reasoners are restrained from confidence, they form their conclusions with great precipitance. Seeing nothing that can darken or embarrass the question, they expect to find their own opinion universally prevalent, and are inclined to impute uncertainty and hesitation to want of honesty, rather than of knowledge.

  Samuel Johnson

  Honesty, Men, Want

  Samuel Johnson (1827). “The Rambler”, p.110

• Happiness," said he, "must be something solid and permanent, without fear and without uncertainty.

  Samuel Johnson

  Said, Permanent, Uncertainty

  Samuel Johnson, John Hawkesworth (1820). “Rasselas, prince of Abissinia”, p.48

• He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wise, Wisdom, Men

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy, Alexander Chalmers (1810). “The idler”, p.229

• To tell of disappointment and misery, to thicken the darkness of futurity, and perplex the labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a delicious employment of the poets

  Samuel Johnson

  Disappointment, Darkness, Labyrinth

  Samuel Johnson (2009). “The Lives of the Poets: A Selection”, p.422, OUP Oxford

• The uncertainty of death is, in effect, the great support of the whole system of life.

  Samuel Johnson

  Death, Support, Effects

• Such is the uncertainty of human affairs, that security and despair are equal follies; and as it is presumption and arrogance to anticipate triumphs, it is weakness and cowardice to prog-nosticate miscarriages.

  Samuel Johnson

  Miscarriage, Arrogance, Despair

  Samuel Johnson (1793). “The rambler”, p.263

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