“He that pines with hunger, is in little care how others shall be fed. The poor man is seldom studious to make his grandson rich.”

Recognising how immediate deprivation narrows concern to present survival · Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

• Society
• Time

“The desires of man increase with his acquisitions; every step which he advances brings something within his view, which he did not see before, and which, as soon as he sees it, he begins to want.”

Describing desire as something that expands with possession · Idler No. 30

• Desire
• Time

“He that lives, must grow old; and he that would rather grow old than die, has God to thank for the infirmities of old age.”

Framing the burdens of age as the price of continued life · Letter to James Boswell, 1782

• Faith
• Mortality
• Time

“I am afraid, that health begins, after seventy, and often long before, to have a meaning different from that which it had at thirty.”

A clear-eyed reflection on how the meaning of health changes with age · Letter to James Boswell, 1782

• Mortality
• Time

“Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions.”

Warning against judging history solely by present assumptions · Lives of the Poets, Milton

• Time
• Truth

“Every man's performances, to be rightly estimated, must be compared with the state of the age in which he lived, and with his own particular opportunities.”

Urging historical context when judging achievement · Preface to Shakespeare

• Time
• Truth

“Every period of time has produced these bubbles of artificial fame, which are kept up a while by the breath of fashion, and then break at once, and are annihilated.”

Describing fashionable reputation as something inflated and easily destroyed · Rambler No. 106

• Fame
• Time

“Misery is caused for the most part, not by a heavy crush of disaster, but by the corrosion of less visible evils, which canker enjoyment, and undermine security.”

Observing how persistent small troubles can erode happiness more than rare catastrophes · Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

• Despair
• Time

“The brightest hours of prosperity have their clouds, and the stream of life, if it is not ruffled by obstructions, will grow putrid by stagnation.”

Suggesting that both difficulty and movement are inseparable from a living life · Rambler No. 165

• Joy
• Time

“To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.”

Urging action when a genuine opportunity for good is present · The Patriot

• Hope
• Time

“We act as if life were without end, though we see and confess its uncertainty and shortness.”

Exposing the gap between what people know about mortality and how they live · Rambler No. 71

• Mortality
• Time

“It is well known, that time once past never returns; and that the moment which is lost is lost for ever.”

Stressing the irrecoverable nature of wasted time · Idler No. 14

• Mortality
• Time

“He that hopes to look back hereafter with satisfaction upon past years must learn to know the present value of single minutes.”

Making the wise use of small portions of time the basis of future satisfaction · Rambler No. 108

• Memory
• Time

“What we hope ever to do with ease we may learn first to do with diligence.”

Connecting eventual ease with patient practice · Lives of the Poets, Milton

• Art
• Time

“If one was to think constantly of death, the business of life would stand still.”

Arguing that awareness of mortality must not paralyse daily living · Boswell, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

• Death
• Time

“Sir, as a man advances in life, he gets what is better than admiration, --judgement, to estimate things at their true value.”

Contrasting youthful admiration with the discriminating judgement of age · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Time
• Truth