A Quote by Samuel Johnson

Such is the emptiness of human enjoyment that we are always impatient of the present. Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust.

Samuel Johnson

Quote Topics

Always Attainment Disgust Emptiness Enjoyment Followed Human Impatient Neglect Possession Present

Quote Author

Samuel Johnson
English - Writer
September 18, 1709 - December 13, 1784

Attainment is followed by neglect, possession by disgust, and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to many another course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last

Samuel Johnson

Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favour, which an artful flatterer may gradually strengthen, till wishes for a particular qualification are improved to hopes of attainment, and hopes of attainment to belief of possession.

Samuel Johnson

Riches are always over estimated; the enjoyment they give is more in the pursuit than the possession.

Sarah Josepha Hale

...all enjoyment is dependent upon the frailty of human life and human desires ... if we were to have all we want and to live forever, all enjoyment would be gone.

Ellen Swallow Richards

The capacity of the mind is broad and huge, like the vast sky. Do not sit with a mind fixed on emptiness. If you do, you will fall into a neutral kind of emptiness. Emptiness includes the sun, moon, stars, and planets, the great earth, mountains and rivers, all trees and grasses, bad people and good people, bad things and good things, heaven and hell; they are all in the midst of emptiness. The emptiness of human nature is also like this.

Huineng

In the heart of a human being, emptiness becomes love. When we touch that Source, instantly the love is present. Literally, the divine becomes human and the human becomes divine.

Adyashanti

When everyone is trying to be something, be nothing. Range with emptiness. Human should be like a pot. As the pot is hold by its emptiness inside, human is hold by the awareness of his nothingness.

Shams Tabrizi

Great art is more than a transient refreshment. It is something which adds to the permanent richness of the soul's self-attainment. It justifies itself both by its immediate enjoyment, and also by its discipline of the inmost being. Its discipline is not distinct from enjoyment but by reason of it. It transforms the soul into the permanent realization of values extending beyond its former self.

Alfred North Whitehead

Unity in diversity is the highest possible attainment of a civilization, a testimony to the most noble possibilities of the human race. This attainment is made possible through passionate concern for choice, in an atmosphere of social trust.

Michael Novak

The ultimate end of education is happiness or a good human life, a life enriched by the possession of every kind of good, by the enjoyment of every type of satisfaction.

Mortimer Adler

It is in the enjoyment and not in mere possession that makes for happiness.

Michel de Montaigne

I imagine that thinking is the great desideratum of the present age; and the cause of whatever is done amiss may justly be reckoned the general neglect of education in those who need it most, the people of fashion. What can be expected where those who have the most influence have the least sense, and those who are sure to be followed set the worst examples?

George Berkeley

That man is never happy for the present is so true, that all his relief from unhappiness is only forgetting himself for a little while. Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

Samuel Johnson

The price of apparent happiness and enjoyment is the neglect of the spontaneous active energies of the acting members.