Small porcelain hand reaching toward a tiny red balloon on a coiled red string

Original artwork, not a still

Samuel Johnson

That man is never happy for the present is so true, that all his relief from unhappiness is only forgetting himself for a little while. Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

This is a bleak observation about contentment. The speaker claims people are never truly happy in the moment, only relieved by brief forgetting. Life, in this view, moves from one desire to the next rather than from joy to joy.

Context reviewed

Share this quote