Quite a few readers have emailed to ask about the Dr. Johnson quotation below. Here it is in full–and just listen to these cadences:
“The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendour cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate; those soft hours of unbended amusement, in which a man shrinks to his natural dimensions, and throws aside the ornaments or disguises which he feels in privacy to be useless incumbrances, and to lose all effect when they become familiar. To be happy at home is the ultimate end of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.”
–Samuel. Johnson, Rambler #68, November 1750