The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia Quotes

“Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content. No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of the spring: no man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source and from the mouth of the Nile.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“Nothing [...] will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something acquired... Do not suffer life to stagnate; it will grow muddy for want of motion: commit yourself again to the current of the world.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“Be not too hasty," said Imlac, "to trust or to admire the teachers of morality: they discourse like angels, but they live like men.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“I have already enjoyed too much; give me something to desire.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“Happiness," said he, "must be something solid and permanent, without fear and without uncertainty.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“Human life is every where a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“Do not suffer life to stagnate, it will grow muddy for want of motion; commit yourself again to the current of the world.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“Ignorance, when voluntary, is criminal, and a man may be properly charged with that evil which he neglected or refused to learn how to prevent.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“And yet it fills me with wonder, that, in almost all countries, the most ancient poets are considered as the best: whether it be that every other kind of knowledge is an acquisition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at once; or that the first poetry of every nation surprised them as a novelty, and retained the credit by consent which it received by accident at first; or whether, as the province of poetry is to describe Nature and Passion, which are always the same, the first writers took possession of the most striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing to those that followed them, but transcription of the same events, and new combinations of the same images. Whatever be the reason, it is commonly observed that the early writers are in possession of nature, and their followers of art: that the first excel in strength and innovation, and the latter in elegance and refinement.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“Pleasure, in itself harmless, may become mischievous, by endearing to us a state which we know to be transient and probatory, and withdrawing our thoughts from that of which every hour brings us nearer to the beginning, and of which no length of time will bring us to the end. Mortification is not virtuous in itself, nor has any other use, but that it disengages us from the allurements of sense. In the state of future perfection, to which we all aspire, there will be pleasure without danger, and security without restraint.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“I can discover within me no power of perception which is not glutted with its proper pleasure, yet I do not feel myself delighted. Man has surely some latent sense for which this place affords no gratification, or he has some desires distinct from sense which must be satisfied before he can be happy.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye, and while we glide along the stream of time, whatever we leave behind us is always lessening, and that which we approach increasing in magnitude.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“Is there such depravity in man as that he should injure another without benefit to himself?”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“To talk in public, to think in solitude, to read and to hear, to enquire and answer enquiries, is the business of a scholar. He wanders about the world without pomp or terror, and is neither known nor valued but by men like himself.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“what reason did not dictate, reason cannot explain.”
― Samuel Johnson, Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

“He who has nothing external that can divert him must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not; for who is pleased with what he is? He then expiates in boundless futurity, and culls from all imaginable conditions that which for the present moment he should most desire, amuses his desires with impossible enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable dominion. The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all combination, and riots in delights which nature and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow.

In time some particular train of ideas fixes the attention; all other intellectual gratifications are rejected; the mind, in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favorite conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth. By degrees the reign of fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in time despotic. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or of anguish.”
― Samuel Johnson, Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

“Of the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain continuance of reason.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“While she was doing something she kept her hope alive.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“That I want nothing,” said the Prince, “or that I know not what I want, is the cause of my complaint; if I had any known want, I should have a certain wish; that wish would excite endeavour, and I should not then repine to see the sun move so slowly towards the western mountains, or to lament when the day breaks, and sleep will no longer hide me from myself.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“How gloomy would be these mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he shall never die; that what now acts shall continue its agency, and what now thinks shall think on for ever. Those that lie here stretched before us, the wise and the powerful of ancient times, warn us to remember the shortness of our present state; they were, perhaps, snatched away while they were busy, like us, in the choice of life.”
― Samuel Johnson, Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

“It seems to have been erected only in compliance with that hunger of imagination which preys incessantly upon life, and must be always appeased by some employment. Those who have already all that they can enjoy must enlarge their desires. He that has built for use till use is supplied must begin to build for vanity, and extend his plan to the utmost power of human performance that he may not be soon reduced to form another wish”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“[...] the mind, in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favourite conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination out upon the wing, is often the sport of those [...] He who has nothing external that can divert him, must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not; for who is pleased with what he is?”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“The state of a mind oppressed with a sudden calamity, said Imlac, is like that of the fabulous inhabitants of the new created earth, who, when the first night came upon them, supposed that day never would return. When the clouds of sorrow gather over us, we see nothing beyond them, nor can imagine how they will be dispelled: yet a new day succeeded to the night. [...] But they who restrain themselves from receiving comfort, do as the savages would have done, had they put out their eyes when it was dark.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“To know any thing, returned the poet, we must know its effects; to see men we must see their works, that we may learn what reason has dictated, or passion has incited, and find what are the most powerful motives of action. To judge rightly of the present we must oppose it to the past; for all judgement is comparative, and of the future nothing can be known. The truth is, that no mind is much employed upon the present: recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments. Our passions are joy and grief, love and hatred, hope and fear. Of joy and grief the past is the object, and the future of hope and fear; even love and hatred respect the past, for the cause must have been before the effect.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“Great works are performed, not by strength, but perseverance: yonder palace was raised by single stones, yet you see its height and spaciousness.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia