Selected Essays of Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson wrote these essays in the 1750s and 1760s for his periodicals, yet every sentence feels like it was written last week. He is the original master of the devastating observation about human weakness: on vanity, on procrastination, on the impossibility of pleasing everyone, on why we read to forget ourselves but cannot. His prose is rigorously balanced, almost mathematical in its construction, yet alive with wit that still has the power to make you laugh or flinch. This collection gathers the finest of his moral essays from The Rambler, The Adventurer, and The Idler, pieces that examine happiness and grief, the art of reading, the dangers of idleness, the persistence of self-deception. Johnson was serious about understanding how people actually think and live, and his essays remain devastatingly accurate portraits of the human condition. For anyone who wants to encounter a prose style of matchless clarity and wit, these essays are indispensable.