A Quote by Samuel Johnson
The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another.
Related Quotes
If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again.
Woman: the peg on which the wit hangs his jest, the preacher his text, the cynic his grouch and the sinner his justification.
If you're reading an exciting book, it raises an expectation but it also raises a fear that the author is not going to deliver, that the expectation is not going to be met, you're going to be disappointed by a wrong turn. But when the thing is completed, the exhilaration and gratitude are deeply intense. You've gotten to read a great thing at its moment of emergence.
No one is satisfied with his position, but every one is satisfied with his wit
Even if man's hunger and thirst and his sexual strivings are completely satisfied, 'he' is not satisfied. In contrast to the animal his most compelling problems are not solved then, they only begin. He strives for power or for love, or for destruction, he risks his life for religious, for political, for humanistic ideals, and these strivings are what constitutes and characterizes the peculiarity of human life.
When thou dost tell another's jest, therein Omit the oaths, which true wit cannot need; Pick out of tales the mirth, but not the sin.
His jest will savour but of shallow wit, When thousands weep, more than did laugh at it.
In science novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation.
Never do anything for another with the expectation of gratitude. The expectation itself turns the gift into an exchange and suggests a debt is owed you.
There are three things which the public will always clamor for, sooner or later: namely, novelty, novelty, novelty.
There are three things which the public will always clamour for, sooner or later; namely: novelty, novelty, novelty.
You can see a whole book as a series of creating an expectation and then delivering a skew on that expectation so it's not totally satisfied.
The prudent, penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land, for himself; then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This, say its advocates, is free labor-the just and generous, and prosperous system, which opens the way for all-gives hope to all, and energy, and progress, and improvement of condition to all.
A type of revolutionary novelty may be extremely beautiful in itself; but, for the creatures of habit that we are, its very novelty tends to make it illegible, at any rate to begin with.
I have never injured anybody with a mordant poem; my
verse contains charges against nobody. Ingenuous, I have
shunned wit steeped in venom--not a letter of mine is dipped
in poisonous jest.
To be in love- where scorn is bought with groans,
Coy looks with heart-sore sighs, one fading moment's mirth
With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights;
If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain;
If lost, why then a grievous labour won;
However, but a folly bought with wit,
Or else a wit by folly vanquished.
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