A Quote by Samuel Johnson
Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness, which nature has kindly placed within our reach.
Related Quotes
Before the tribunal of nature, a man has no more right to life than a rattlesnake; he has no more right to liberty than any wild beast; his right to the pursuit of happiness is nothing but a license to maintain the struggle for existence, if he can find within himself the powers with which to do it.
What ever our wandering our happiness will always be found within a narrow compass, and in the middle of the objects more immediately within our reach.
True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.
Those authors into whose hands nature has placed a magic wand, with which they no sooner touch us than we forget the unhappiness in life, than the darkness leaves our soul, and we are reconciled to existence, should be placed among the benefactors of the human race.
Nothing is more human than for man to desire naturally things impossible to his nature. It is, indeed, the property of a nature which is not closed up in matter like the nature of physical things, but which is intellectual or infinitized by the spirit. It is the property of a metaphysical nature. Such desires reach for the infinite, because the intellect thirsts for being and being is infinite.
I longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen: that I desired more of practical experience than I possessed; more of intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of character, than was here within my reach.
Nature, keeping only useless secrets, had placed within reach and in sight of human beings the things it was necessary for them to know.
As you inquire into issues and turn judgments around, you come to see that every perceived problem appearing "out there" is really nothing more than a misperception within your own thinking.
No "natural" resource is more precious and to be used more wisely than time. These mortal moments matter more than we know. There are no idle hours; there are only idle people. In true righteousness there is serenity, but there is an array of reminders that the "sacred present" is packed with possibilities which are slipping by us, which are going away from us each moment.
Nothing could be more absurd than an experiment in which computers are placed in a classroom where nothing else is changed.
Compassion does not only refine and civilize human nature, but has something in it more pleasing and agreeable, than what can be met with in such an indolent happiness, such an indifference to mankind, as that in which the stoics placed their wisdom. As love is the most delightful passion, pity is nothing else but love softened by a degree of sorrow: In short, it is a kind of pleasing anguish, anguish as well as generous sympathy, that knits mankind together, and blends them in the same common lot.
For, after all, the foundation of our whole nature, and, therefore, of our happiness, is our physique, and the most essential factor in happiness is health, and, next in importance after health, the ability to maintain ourselves in independence and freedom from care.
Indeed, happiness is nothing other than being encompassed, an after-image of the original shelter within the mother. But for this reason no one who is happy can know that he is so. To see happiness, he would have to pass out of it: to be as if already born. He who says he is happy lies, and in invoking happiness, sins against it. He alone keeps faith who says: I was happy.
There is nothing of which we are more ashamed than of not being ourselves. And there is nothing which brings us greater joy and happiness than to think, feel, and say what is ours.
Nature has placed nothing so high that virtue can not reach it.
[Lat., Nihil tam alte natura constituit quo virtus non possit eniti.]
You shall, I question not, find a way to the top if you diligently seek for it; for nature hath placed nothing so high that it is out of the reach of industry and valor.
Related Authors
Ayn Rand Quotes
Russian
Writer
C. S. Lewis Quotes
British
Writer
Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes
French
Writer
Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
English
Writer
H. L. Mencken Quotes
American
Writer
Haruki Murakami Quotes
Japanese
Writer
J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes
English
Writer
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
American
Writer
Leo Tolstoy Quotes
Russian
Writer
Mark Twain Quotes
American
Writer
Mason Cooley Quotes
American
Writer
Ray Bradbury Quotes
American
Writer
Seth Godin Quotes
American
Writer
Sherrilyn Kenyon Quotes
American
Writer
Suzanne Collins Quotes
American
Writer