Reality Check 18th Century Style

While researching for a comic I'm making for the street magazine Megafon, I came across some rather beautiful quotes from Samuel Johnson, which I for one would do good to contemplate every once in a while. Thought I'd just share some of them today. Enjoy!

 Samuel Johnson, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, c. 1772

Picture from here

"The fountain of content must spring up in the mind; and ... he, who has so little knowledge of human nature, as to seek happiness by changing any thing, but his own dispositions, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he purposes to remove."

"Every man may grow rich by contracting his wishes, and by quiet acquiescence in what has been given him, supply the absence of more."

"The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it."

"We see every day the unexpected death of our friends and our enemies, we see new graves hourly opened for men older and younger than our selves, for the cautious and the careless, the dissolute and the temperate, for men who like us were providing to enjoy or improve hours now irreversibly cut off: we see all this, and yet, instead of living, let year glide after year in preparations to live."