Book detail: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752 is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
The Rambler is a series of periodical papers that were published in three separate volumes, spanning the years 1750, 1751, and 1752. Each volume consists of a variety of essays and articles, covering a range of topics including social issues, literature, and philosophy. The work is notable for its contribution to the development of the essay form and its influence on subsequent literary works.
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“Plenty is the original cause of many of our needs; and even the poverty, which is so frequent and distressful in civilized nations, proceeds often from that change of manners which opulence has produced. Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries; but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“The accidental prescriptions of authority, when time has procured them veneration, are often confounded with the laws of nature, and those rules are supposed coeval with reason, of which the first rise cannot be discovered.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“It is easy for a man who sits idle at home, and has nobody to please but himself, to ridicule or censure the common practices of mankind.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Present opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“The student who would build his knowledge on solid foundations, and proceed by just degrees to the pinnacles of truth, is directed by the great philosopher of France to begin by doubting of his own existence. In like manner, whoever would complete any arduous and intricate enterprise, should, as soon as his imagination can cool after the first blaze of hope, place before his own eyes every possible embarrassment that may retard or defeat him. He should first question the probability of success, and then endeavour to remove the objections that he has raised.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“It is not difficult to conceive, however, that for many reasons a man writes much better than he lives. For without entering into refined speculations, it may be shown much easier to design than to perform. A man proposes his schemes of life in a state of abstraction and disengagement, exempt from the enticements of hope, the solicitations of affection, the importunities of appetite, or the depressions of fear.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“A successful author is equally in danger of the diminution of his fame, whether he continues or ceases to write. The regard of the public is not to be kept but by tribute, and the remembrance of past service will quickly languish unless successive performances frequently revive it. Yet in every new attempt there is new hazard, and there are few who do not, at some unlucky time, injure their own characters by attempting to enlarge them.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Those who will not take the trouble to think for themselves, have always somebody that thinks for them; and the difficulty in writing is to please those from whom others learn to be pleased.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“If an author be supposed to involve his thoughts in voluntary obscurity, and to obstruct, by unnecessary difficulties, a mind eager in the pursuit of truth; if he writes not to make others learned, but to boast the learning which he possesses himself, and wishes to be admired rather than understood, he counteracts the first end of writing, and justly suffers the utmost severity of censure, or the more afflicting severity of neglect.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Truth, like beauty, varies its fashions, and is best recommended by different dresses to different minds; and he that recalls the attention of mankind to any part of learning which time has left behind it, may be truly said to advance the literatures of his own age. As the manners of nations vary, new topicks of persuasion become necessary, and new combinations of imagery are produced; and he that can accommodate himself to the reigning taste, may always have readers who perhaps would not have looked upon better performances.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“The authors that in any nation last from age to age are very few, because there are very few that have any other claim to notice than that they catch hold on present curiosity, and gratify some accidental desire, or produce some temporary conveniency.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Of those that spin out trifles and die without a memorial, many flatter themselves with high opinions of their own importance, and imagine that they are every day adding some improvement to human life.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“A successful author is equally in danger of the diminution of his fame, whether he continues or ceases to write.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“There is nothing more dreadful to an author than neglect; compared with which reproach, hatred, and opposition are names of happiness; yet this worst, this meanest fate, every one who dares to write has reason to fear.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Commerce can never be at a stop while one man wants what another can supply; and credit will never be denied, while it is likely to be repaid with profit.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“It is almost always the unhappiness of a victorious disputant to destroy his own authority by claiming too many consequences, or diffusing his proposition to an indefensible extent.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Every man has some favorite topic of conversation, on which, by a feigned seriousness of attention, he may be drawn to expatiate without end.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“The whole power of cunning is privative; to say nothing, and to do nothing , is the utmost of its reach. Yet men, thus narrow by nature and mean by art, are sometimes able to rise by the miscarriages of bravery and the openness of integrity, and, watching failures and snatching opportunities, obtain advantages which belong to higher characters.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“As he that lives longest lives but a little while, every man may be certain that he has no time to waste. The duties of life are commensurate to its duration; and every day brings its task, which, if neglected, is doubled on the morrow.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“The maxim of Cleobulus, "Mediocrity is best," has been long considered a universal principle, extending through the whole compass of life and nature. The experience of every age seems to have given it new confirmation, and to show that nothing, however specious or alluring, is pursued with propriety or enjoyed with safety beyond certain limits.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Scarce any man becomes eminently disagreeable but by a departure from his real character, and an attempt at something for which nature or education has left him unqualified.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“It may be no less dangerous to claim, on certain occasions, too little than too much. There is something captivating in spirit and intrepidity, to which we often yield as to a resistless power; nor can we often yield as to a resistless power; nor can he reasonably expect the confidence of others who too apparently distrusts himself.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Whosoever shall look heedfully upon those who are eminent for their riches will not think their condition such as that he should hazard his quiet, and much less his virtue, to obtain it, for all that great wealth generally gives above a moderate fortune is more room for the freaks of caprice, and more privilege for ignorance and vice, a quicker succession of flatteries, and a larger circle of voluptuousness.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Forgetfulness is necessary to remembrance. Ideas are retained by renovation of that impression which time is always wearing away,and which new images are striving to obliterate. If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur, and every recurrence would reinstate them in their former place.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“No weakness of the human mind has more frequently incurred animadversion, than the negligence with which men overlook their own faults, however flagrant, and the easiness with which they pardon them, however frequently repeated.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“If we will have the kindness of others, we must endure their follies.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Idleness is often covered by turbulence and hurry. He that neglects his known duty and real employment naturally endeavours to crowd his mind with something that may bar out the remembrance of his own folly, and does any thing but what he ought to do with eager diligence, that he may keep himself in his own favour.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“A man finds in the productions of nature an inexhaustible stock of material on which he can employ himself, without any temptations to envy or malevolence, and has always a certain prospect of discovering new reasons for adoring the sovereign author of the universe.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Evil is uncertain in the same degree as good, and for the reason that we ought not to hope too securely, we ought not to fear with to much dejection.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favor. She imagines herself not only certain of accomplishing every adventure, but of obtaining those rewards which the accomplishment may deserve. She is not easily persuaded to believe that the force of merit can be resisted by obstinacy and avarice, or its luster darkened by envy and malignity.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Self-love is often rather arrogant than blind; it does not hide our faults from ourselves, but persuades us that they escape the notice of others.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Man is a transitory being, and his designs must partake of the imperfections of their author. To confer duration is not always in our power. We must snatch the present moment, and employ it well, without too much solicitude for the future, and content ourselves with reflecting that our part is performed. He that waits for an opportunity to do much at once, may breathe out his life in idle wishes, and regret, in the last hour, his useless intentions and barren zeal.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“The uniform necessities of human nature produce in a great measure uniformity of life, and for part of the day make one place like another; to dress and to undress, to eat and to sleep, are the same in London as in the country.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“There prevails among men of letters, an opinion, that all appearance of science is particularly hateful to Women; and that therefore whoever desires to be well received in female assemblies, must qualify himself by a total rejection of all that is serious, rational, or important; must consider argument or criticism as perpetually interdicted; and devote all his attention to trifles, and all his eloquence to compliment.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“False taste is always busy to mislead those that are entering upon the regions of learning; and the traveller, uncertain of his way, and forsaken by the sun, will be pleased to see a fainter orb arise on the horizon, that may rescue him from total darkness, though with weak and borrowed lustre.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“All envy is proportionate to desire; we are uneasy at the attainments of another, according as we think our own happiness would be advanced by the addition of that which he withholds from us.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Such is the constitution of man that labour may be styled its own reward; nor will any external incitements be requisite, if it be considered how much happiness is gained, and how much misery escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority: men please themselves with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider survey than others, and detected faults and follies which escape vulgar observation.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“There are few so free from vanity as not to dictate to those who will hear their instructions with a visible sense of their own beneficence.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“There are indeed, in the present corruption of mankind, many incitements to forsake truth: the need of palliating our own faults and the convenience of imposing on the ignorance or credulity of others so frequently occur; so many immediate evils are”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
“Vulgar and inactive minds confound familiarity with knowledge, and conceive themselves informed of the whole nature of things, when they are shown their form or told their use.”
Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752