Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Samuel Johnson, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Samuel Johnson quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 1526 Samuel Johnson quotes for you to read and share.

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Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age. -- Samuel Johnson
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No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius. -- Samuel Johnson
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Most men are unwilling to be taught. -- Samuel Johnson
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Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance. -- Samuel Johnson
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Read the book you do honestly feel a wish and curiosity to read. -- Samuel Johnson
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There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten. -- Samuel Johnson
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When we see our enemies and friends gliding away before us, let us not forget that we are subject to the general law of mortality, and shall soon be where our doom will be fixed forever. -- Samuel Johnson
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Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics laughs at strength. -- Samuel Johnson
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He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dulness in others. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions. -- Samuel Johnson
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I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian. -- Samuel Johnson
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We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide. -- Samuel Johnson
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Unnumbered suppliants crowd Preferment's gate
Athirst for wealth, and burning to be great;
Delusive Fortune hears th' incessant call,
They mount, they shine, evaporate, and fall. -- Samuel Johnson
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Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice. -- Samuel Johnson
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Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others. -- Samuel Johnson
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Admiration begins where acquaintance ceases -- Samuel Johnson
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He said that few people had intellectual resources sufficient to forgo the pleasures of wine. They could not otherwise contrive how to fill the interval between dinner and supper. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. -- Samuel Johnson
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Pension: An allowance made to anyone without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country. -- Samuel Johnson
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Extended empires are like expanded gold, exchanging solid strength for feeble splendor. -- Samuel Johnson
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Luncheon: as much food as one's hand can hold. -- Samuel Johnson
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I would advise you Sir, to study algebra, if you are not already an adept in it: your head would be less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbors about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow. -- Samuel Johnson
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When a man marries a widow his jealousies revert to the past: no man is as good as his wife says her first husband was -- Samuel Johnson
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Among the lower classes of mankind there will be found very little desire of any other knowledge than what may contribute immediately to the relief of some pressing uneasiness, or the attainment of some near advantage. -- Samuel Johnson
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No man tells his opinion so freely as when he imagines it received with implicit veneration. -- Samuel Johnson
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ANT (ANT) n.s.[aemett, Sax. which Junius imagines, not without probability, to have been first contracted to aemt, and then softened to ant.]An emmet; a pismire. A small insect that lives in great numbers together in hillocks. -- Samuel Johnson
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Of a thousand shavers, two do not shave so much alike as not to be distinguished. -- Samuel Johnson
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Smoking is a shocking thing - blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people's mouths, eyes, and noses, and having the same thing done to us. -- Samuel Johnson
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People in distress never think that you feel enough. -- Samuel Johnson
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We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes? -- Samuel Johnson
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If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim. -- Samuel Johnson
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Pleasure that is obtained by unreasonable and unsuitable cost must always end in pain. -- Samuel Johnson
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Reflect that life, like every other blessing,
Derives its value from its use alone. -- Samuel Johnson
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None but a fool worries about things he cannot influence. -- Samuel Johnson
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This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts. -- Samuel Johnson
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He bemoans our miseries with the tender pity of a Cowper, who, in warning us of life's grovelling pursuits and empty joys, seeks, by withdrawing us from their delusive dominion, to prepare us for "another and a better world." No. -- Samuel Johnson
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Lichfield, England. Swallows certainly sleep all winter. A number of them conglobulate together, by flying round and round, and then all in a heap throw themselves under water, and lye in the bed of a river. -- Samuel Johnson
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To go and see one druidical temple is only to see that it is nothing, for there is neither art nor power in it; and seeing one is quite enough. -- Samuel Johnson
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History can be formed from permanent monuments and records; but lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost forever. -- Samuel Johnson
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I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself. -- Samuel Johnson
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The wise man applauds he who he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world applauds the wealthy. -- Samuel Johnson
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The hopes of zeal are not wholly groundless. -- Samuel Johnson
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Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged. -- Samuel Johnson
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Do not ... hope wholly to reason away your troubles; do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind. -- Samuel Johnson
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That distrust which intrudes so often on your mind is a mode of melancholy, which, if it be the business of a wise man to be happy, it is foolish to indulge; and if it be a duty to preserve our faculties entire for their proper use, it is criminal. Suspicion is very often an useless pain. -- Samuel Johnson
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When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency. -- Samuel Johnson
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Never trust your tongue when your heart is bitter. -- Samuel Johnson
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ANKER (A'NKER) n.s.[ancker, Dut.] A liquid measure chiefly used at Amsterdam. It is the fourth part of the awm, and contains two stekans: each stekan consists of sixteen mengles; the mengle being equal -- Samuel Johnson
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Oratory is the power of beating down your adversary's arguments and putting better in their place. -- Samuel Johnson
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The two offices of memory are collection and distribution. -- Samuel Johnson
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"I fly from pleasure," said the prince, "because pleasure has ceased to please; I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others." -- Samuel Johnson
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It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see. -- Samuel Johnson
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Life of Ages, richly poured,
Love of God unspent and free,
Flowing in the Prophet's word
And the People's liberty!
Never was to chosen race
That unstinted tide confined;
Thine is every time and place,
Fountain sweet of heart and mind! -- Samuel Johnson
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Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings because they are his own. -- Samuel Johnson
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Friendship, peculiar boon of Heaven, The noble mind's delight and pride, To men and angels only given, To all the lower world denied. -- Samuel Johnson
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The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things-the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit. -- Samuel Johnson
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Catechism.3. Recovery of health. Your honour's players hearing your amendment,Are come to play a pleasant comedy.Shakesp.Tam. Shrew. -- Samuel Johnson
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In my early years I read very hard. It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as much at eighteen as I do now. -- Samuel Johnson
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For who is pleased with himself. -- Samuel Johnson
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Dogs have not the power of comparing. A dog will take a small piece of meat as readily as a large, when both are before him. -- Samuel Johnson
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I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. -- Samuel Johnson
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In traveling, a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge. -- Samuel Johnson
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He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him. -- Samuel Johnson
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If I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that is warm for truth, and fearless in its defense, performs one of the duties of a good man; he strenghtens his own conviction, and guards others from delusion; but steadiness of belief, and boldness of profession, are yet only part of the form of godliness. -- Samuel Johnson
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When emulation leads us to strive for self-elevation by merit alone, and not by belittling another, then it is one of the grandest possible incentives to action. -- Samuel Johnson
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Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us. -- Samuel Johnson
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Never, my dear Sir, do you take it into your head that I do not love you; you may settle yourself in full confidence both of my love and my esteem; I love you as a kind man, I value you as a worthy man, and hope in time to reverence you as a man of exemplary piety. -- Samuel Johnson
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Any of us would kill a cow rather than not have beef. -- Samuel Johnson
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I love the acquaintance of young people; because, in the first place, I do not like to think myself growing old. In the next place, young acquaintances must last longest, if they do last; and then, sir, young men have more virtue than old men; they have more generous sentiments in every respect. -- Samuel Johnson
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It requires but little acquaintance with the heart to know that woman's first wish is to be handsome; and that, consequently, the readiest method of obtaining her kindness is to praise her beauty. -- Samuel Johnson
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If the man who turnips cries, Cry not when his father dies, 'Tis proof that he had rather Have a turnip than his father. -- Samuel Johnson
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Marriage is the strictest tie of perpetual friendship, and there can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity; and he must expect to be wretched, who pays to beauty, riches, or politeness that regard which only virtue and piety can claim. -- Samuel Johnson
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Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters. -- Samuel Johnson
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By those who look close to the ground dirt will be seen. I hope I see things from a greater distance. -- Samuel Johnson
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Now ... that you are going to marry, do not expect more from life, than life will afford. -- Samuel Johnson
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The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book. -- Samuel Johnson
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Care that is once enter'd into the breast
Will have the whole possession ere it rest. -- Samuel Johnson
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It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy and yet unenvied, to be healthy with physic, secure without a guard, and to obtain from the bounty of nature what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of art. -- Samuel Johnson
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Human life is every where a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed. -- Samuel Johnson
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The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England! -- Samuel Johnson
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There is nothing by which a man exasperates most people more, than displaying a superior ability of briliancy in conversation. They seem pleased at the time; but their envy makes them curse him at their hearts. -- Samuel Johnson
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Books without the knowledge of life are useless. -- Samuel Johnson
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Men are most powerfully affected by those evils which themselves feel, or which appear before their own eyes. -- Samuel Johnson
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The chief art of learning, as Locke has observed, is to attempt but little at a time. The widest excursions of the mind are made by short flights frequently repeated; the most lofty fabrics of science are formed by the continued accumulation of single propositions. -- Samuel Johnson
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Those authors who would find many readers, must endeavour to please while they instruct. -- Samuel Johnson
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In life's last scene what prodigies surprise,
Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise!
From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow,
And Swift expires a driveller and a show. -- Samuel Johnson
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When a king asked Euclid, the mathematician, whether he could not explain his art to him in a more compendious manner? he was answered, that there was no royal way to geometry. -- Samuel Johnson
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Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions. -- Samuel Johnson
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My nights are flatulent and unquiet. -- Samuel Johnson
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What agreement is there between the hyena and the dog? and what peace between the rich and the poor?BibleEcclus,xiii. 18.2. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man must assume the moral burden of his own boredom. -- Samuel Johnson
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AMENTACEOUS (AMENTA'CEOUS) adj.[amentatus, Lat.]Hanging as by a thread. The pine tree hath amentaceous flowers or katkins.Miller. -- Samuel Johnson
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The really happy woman is the one who can enjoy the scenery when she has to take a detour. Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but rather a manner of traveling. -- Samuel Johnson
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It will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor. -- Samuel Johnson
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Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again. -- Samuel Johnson
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The imitator treads a beaten walk, and with all his diligence can only find a few flowers or branches untouched by his predecessor, the refuse of contempt, or the omissions of negligence. -- Samuel Johnson
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But the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favour, and reason by degrees submits to absurdity, as the eye is in time accommodated to darkness. -- Samuel Johnson
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Whoever rises above those who once pleased themselves with equality, will have many malevolent gazers at his eminence. -- Samuel Johnson
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The most useful truths are always universal, and unconnected with accidents and customs. -- Samuel Johnson
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Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea. -- Samuel Johnson
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When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away. -- Samuel Johnson
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Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out. -- Samuel Johnson
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Sir, they are a race of convicts and ought to be grateful for anything we allow them short of hanging. -- Samuel Johnson
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Pity is not natural to man. Children and savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason. We may have uneasy sensations from seeing a creature in distress, without pity; but we have not pity unless we wish to relieve him. -- Samuel Johnson
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Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words. -- Samuel Johnson
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Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles. -- Samuel Johnson
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Such are the vicissitudes of the world, through all its parts, that day and night, labor and rest, hurry and retirement, endear each other; such are the changes that keep the mind in action: we desire, we pursue, we obtain, we are satiated; we desire something else and begin a new pursuit. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation. -- Samuel Johnson
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Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present. -- Samuel Johnson
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I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much. -- Samuel Johnson
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Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise. -- Samuel Johnson
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I wish you would add an index rerum, that when the reader recollects any incident he may easily find it. -- Samuel Johnson
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Of riches it is not necessary to write the praise. Let it, however, be remembered that he who has money to spare has it always in his power to benefit others, and of such power a good man must always be desirous. -- Samuel Johnson
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In civilized society external advantages make us more respected. A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one. You may analyze this and say, What is there in it? But that will avail you nothing, for it is a part of a general system. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is no temper more unpropitious to interest than desultory application and unlimited inquiry, by which the desires are held in a perpetual equipoise, and the mind fluctuates between different purposes without determination. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is a frightful interval between the seed and the timber. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. The visit of an invader is necessarily rare, but domestic animosities allow no cessation. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every reader should remember the diffidence of Socrates, and repair by his candour the injuries of time: he should impute the seeming defects of his author to some chasm of intelligence, and suppose that the sense which is now weak was once forcible -- Samuel Johnson
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There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that Nature has given him something peculiar to himself. -- Samuel Johnson
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Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly! -- Samuel Johnson
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Ah! Sir, a boy's being flogged is not so severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him. -- Samuel Johnson
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Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favour. -- Samuel Johnson
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It would add much to human happiness, if an art could be taught of forgetting all of which the remembrance is at once useless and afflictive, that the mind might perform its functions without encumbrance, and the past might no longer encroach upon the present. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it. -- Samuel Johnson
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I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am. -- Samuel Johnson
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Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religions hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper and deeper. -- Samuel Johnson
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Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off. -- Samuel Johnson
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Luxury, so far as it reaches the people, will do good to the race of people; it will strengthen and multiply them. Sir, no nation was ever hurt by luxury; for, as I said before; it can reach but a very few. -- Samuel Johnson
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Riches are of no value in themselves; their use is discovered only in that which they procure. -- Samuel Johnson
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Pride is undoubtedly the original of anger; but pride, like every other passion, if it once breaks loose from reason, counteracts its own purposes. -- Samuel Johnson
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Philips, whose touch harmonious could remove The pangs of guilty power and hapless love! Rest here, distress'd by poverty no more; Here find that calm thou gav'st so oft before; Sleep undisturb'd within this peaceful shrine, Till angels wake thee with a note like thine! -- Samuel Johnson
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I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed. -- Samuel Johnson
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High people, sir, are the best; take a hundred ladies of quality, you'll find them better wives, better mothers, more willing to sacrifice their own pleasures to their children, than a hundred other woman. -- Samuel Johnson
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Many leave the labours of half their life to their executors and to chance, because they will not send them abroad unfinished, and are unable to finish them, having prescribed to themselves such a degree of exactness as human diligence can scarcely ontain. -- Samuel Johnson
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The opinions prevalent in one age, as truths above the reach of controversy, are confuted and rejected in another, and rise again to reception in remoter times. Thus the human mind is kept in motion without progress. -- Samuel Johnson
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The uncertainty of death is, in effect, the great support of the whole system of life. -- Samuel Johnson
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The disturbers of happiness are our desires, our griefs, and our fears. -- Samuel Johnson
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Depend on it, I will defend this little citadel to the utmost. -- Samuel Johnson
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Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather political than religious. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him. -- Samuel Johnson
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Politeness is fictitious benevolence. Depend upon it, the want of it never fails to produce something disagreeable to one or other. -- Samuel Johnson
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Memory is like all other human powers, with which no man can be satisfied who measures them by what he can conceive, or by what he can desire. -- Samuel Johnson
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Is not a patron my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? -- Samuel Johnson
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Falsehood always endeavors to copy the mien and attitude of truth. -- Samuel Johnson
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The highest panegyric, therefore, that private virtue can receive, is the praise of servants. -- Samuel Johnson
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All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own, and if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it. -- Samuel Johnson
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The duty of criticism is neither to depreciate nor dignify by partial representations, but to hold out the light of reason, whatever it may discover; and to promulgate the determinations of truth, whatever she shall dictate -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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Who left nothing of authorship untouched, and touched nothing which he did not adorn.
[Lat., Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit; nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.] -- Samuel Johnson
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A coxcomb is ugly all over with the effectation of a fine gentleman. -- Samuel Johnson
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Though the discoveries or acquisitions of man are not always adequate to the expectations of his pride, they are at least sufficient to animate his industry. -- Samuel Johnson
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There must always be a struggle between a father and son, while one aims at power and the other at independence. -- Samuel Johnson
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Order is a lovely nymph, the child of Beauty and Wisdom; her attendants are Comfort, Neatness, and Activity; her abode is the valley of happiness: she is always to be found when sought for, and never appears so lovely as when contrasted with her opponent, Disorder. -- Samuel Johnson
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A second marriage is a triumph of hope over experience -- Samuel Johnson
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Books have always a secret influence on the understanding. -- Samuel Johnson
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About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right. -- Samuel Johnson
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From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,- Path, motive, guide, original, and end. -- Samuel Johnson
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Wheresoe'er I turn my view,
All is strange, yet nothing new:
Endless labor all along,
Endless labor to be wrong:
Phrase that Time has flung away;
Uncouth words in disarray,
Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet,
Ode, and elegy, and sonnet. -- Samuel Johnson
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You think I love flattery (says Dr. Johnson), and so I do; but a little too much always disgusts me: that fellow Richardson, on the contrary, could not be contented to sail quietly down the stream of reputation, without longing to taste the froth from every stroke of the oar. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that floats lazily down the stream, in pursuit of something borne along by the same current, will find himself indeed moved forward; but unless he lays his hand to the oar, and increases his speed by his own labour, must be always at the same distance from that which he is following. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many fold in their passage; while they lie waiting for the gale. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is surely very narrow policy that supposes money to be the chief good. -- Samuel Johnson
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If misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill-fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced. -- Samuel Johnson
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If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is so far from being natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilised society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together. -- Samuel Johnson
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To keep your secret is wisdom, but to expect others to keep it is folly. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend. -- Samuel Johnson
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They who have already enjoyed the crowds and noise of the great city, know their desire to return is little more than the restlessness of a vacant mind, that they are not so much led by hope as driven by disgust, and wish rather to leave the country than to see the town. -- Samuel Johnson
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Sir, you must not neglect doing a thing immediately good from fear of remote evil; -from fear of its being abused. -- Samuel Johnson
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Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nothing concentrates one's mind so much as the realization that one is going to be hanged in the morning! -- Samuel Johnson
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Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. -- Samuel Johnson
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What ever the motive for the insult, it is always best to overlook it; for folly doesn't deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect. -- Samuel Johnson
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Quack: A boastful pretender to arts which he does not understand. A vain boastful pretender to physick; An artful, tricking practitioner in physick. -- Samuel Johnson
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Reason and truth will prevail at last -- Samuel Johnson
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[W]ith an unquiet mind, neither exercise, nor diet, nor physick can be of much use. -- Samuel Johnson
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Few moments are more pleasing than those in which the mind is concerting measures for a new undertaking. -- Samuel Johnson
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There may be community of material possessions, but there can never be community of love or esteem. -- Samuel Johnson
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Suspicion is most often useless pain. -- Samuel Johnson
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To build is to be robbed. -- Samuel Johnson
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Slander is the revenge of a coward, and dissimulation of his defense. -- Samuel Johnson
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There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is better to live rich than to die rich. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness, which nature has kindly placed within our reach. -- Samuel Johnson
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Your aspirations are your possibilities. -- Samuel Johnson
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Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt. -- Samuel Johnson
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Governors being accustomed to hear of more crimes than they can punish, and more wrongs than they can redress, set themselves at ease by indiscriminate negligence, and presently forget the request when they lose sight of the petitioner. -- Samuel Johnson
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Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true. -- Samuel Johnson
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If you want to be a writer, then write. Write every day! -- Samuel Johnson
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Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy. -- Samuel Johnson
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A person loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is to be steadily inculcated, that virtue is the highest proof of understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness. -- Samuel Johnson
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While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it. -- Samuel Johnson
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He who makes a beast out of himself removes himself from the pain of being human -- Samuel Johnson
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ACCEPTATION (ACCEPTA'TION) n.s.[from accept.]1. Reception, whether good or bad. This large sense seems now wholly out of use. -- Samuel Johnson
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I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney. -- Samuel Johnson
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A family ... is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed to revolutions. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot comprehend. -- Samuel Johnson
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Women can spin very well, but they cannot write a good book of cookery. -- Samuel Johnson
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Yet reason frowns in war's unequal game,
Where wasted nations raise a single name;
And mortgag'd states their grandsire's wreaths regret,
From age to age in everlasting debt;
Wreaths which at last the dear-bought right convey
To rust on medals, or on stones decay. -- Samuel Johnson
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Year chases year, decay pursues decay,
Still drops some joy from with'ring life away;
New forms arise, and diff'rent views engage -- Samuel Johnson
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Was there ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's Progress? -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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Truth has no gradations; nothing which admits of increase can be so much what it is, as truth is truth. There may be a strange thing, and a thing more strange. But if a proposition be true, there can be none more true. -- Samuel Johnson
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Of the present state, whatever it be, we feel and are forced to confess the misery; yet when the same state is again at a distance, imagination paints it as desirable. -- Samuel Johnson
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How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.
Still to ourselves in every place consign'd,
Our own felicity we make or find: -- Samuel Johnson
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What signifies protesting so against flattery when a person speaks well of one, it must either be true or false, you know if true, let us rejoice in his good opinion if he lies, it is a proof at least that he loves more to please me, than to sit s -- Samuel Johnson
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Excise: A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid. -- Samuel Johnson
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The future is bought with the present. -- Samuel Johnson
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Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil but its duty, like that of other passions, is not to overbear reason, but to assist it. It should not be suffered to tyrannize in the imagination, to raise phantoms of horror, or to beset life with supernumerary distresses. -- Samuel Johnson
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ABNODATION (ABNODA'TION) n.s.[abnodatio, Lat.] The act of cutting away knots from trees;a term of gardening.Dict. -- Samuel Johnson
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Critics, like the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest. -- Samuel Johnson
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No wonder, Sir, that he is vain; a man who is perpetually flattered in every mode that can be conceived. So many bellows have blown the fire, that one wonders he is not by this time become a cinder. -- Samuel Johnson
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Domestic discord is not inevitably and fatally necessary; but yet it is not easy to avoid. -- Samuel Johnson
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No man is obliged to do as much as he can do. A man is to have part of his life to himself. -- Samuel Johnson
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Life, however short, is made still shorter by waste of time. -- Samuel Johnson
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AMEL (A'MEL) n.s.[email, Fr.]The matter with which the variegated works are overlaid, which we call enamelled. The materials of glass melted with calcined tin, compose an undiaphanous body. This white amel is the basis of all those fine concretes that goldsmiths and artificers -- Samuel Johnson
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To embarrass justice by multiplicity of laws, or to hazard it by confidence in judges, seem to be the opposite rocks on which all civil institutions have been wrecked, and between which legislative wisdom has never yet found an open passage. -- Samuel Johnson
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The business of life is to go forward; he who sees evil in prospect meets it in his way, and he who catches it by retrospection turns back to find it. That which is feared may sometimes be avoided, but that which is regretted to-day may be regretted again to-morrow. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach. -- Samuel Johnson
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What I gained by being in France was learning to be better satisfied with my own country. -- Samuel Johnson
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A hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has, for twenty years, diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and, with tea, welcomes the morning. -- Samuel Johnson
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Gratitude is a species of justice. -- Samuel Johnson
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That friendship may be at once fond and lasting, there must not only be equal virtue on each part, but virtue of the same kind; not only the same end must be proposed, but the same means must be approved by both. -- Samuel Johnson
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Whoever commits a fraud is guilty not only of the particular injury to him who he deceives, but of the diminution of that confidence which constitutes not only the ease but the existence of society. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every man has frequent grievances which only the solicitude of friendship will discover and remedy, and which would remain for ever unheeded in the mighty heap of human calamity, were it only surveyed by the eye of general benevolence equally attentive to every misery. -- Samuel Johnson
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We may have many acquaintances, but we can have but few friends; this made Aristotle say that he that hath many friends hath none. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every human being whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge. -- Samuel Johnson
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Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know That life protracted is protracted woe. -- Samuel Johnson
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When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live. -- Samuel Johnson
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If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman. -- Samuel Johnson
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Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage. -- Samuel Johnson
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The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence. -- Samuel Johnson
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Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice. -- Samuel Johnson
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The king who makes war on his enemies tenderly distresses his subjects most cruelly. -- Samuel Johnson
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The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne. -- Samuel Johnson
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In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness - inspissated gloom. -- Samuel Johnson
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I deny the lawfulness of telling a lie to a sick man for fear of alarming him; you have no business with consequences, you are to tell the truth. -- Samuel Johnson
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I respect Millar: he has raised the price of literature -- Samuel Johnson
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ALPHA (A'LPHA) n.s.The first letter in the Greek alphabet, answering to our A; therefore used to signify the first. I am alpha and omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.BibleRevelat. -- Samuel Johnson
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The liberty of using harmless pleasure will not be disputed; but it is still to be examined what pleasures are harmless. -- Samuel Johnson
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Such, said Nekayah, is the state of life, none are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish it to change again. The world is not yet exhausted. Let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before. -- Samuel Johnson
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Guilt has always its horrors and solicitudes; and, to make it yet more shameful and detestable, it is doomed often to stand in awe of those to whom nothing could give influence or weight but their power of betraying. -- Samuel Johnson
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You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe. -- Samuel Johnson
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The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendor cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate. -- Samuel Johnson
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Scarcely any degree of judgment is sufficient to restrain the imagination from magnifying that on which it is long detained -- Samuel Johnson
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AFFUSION (AFFU'SION) n.s.[affusio, Lat.]The act of pouring one thing upon another. Upon the affusion of a tincture of galls, it immediately became as black as ink.Grew'sMusaeum. -- Samuel Johnson
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As a madman is apt to think himself grown suddenly great, so he that grows suddenly great is apt to borrow a little from the madman. -- Samuel Johnson
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The misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated. -- Samuel Johnson
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Language is the dress of thought; and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy -- Samuel Johnson
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Whoever desires, for his writings or himself, what none can reasonably contemn, the favour of mankind, must add grace to strength, and make his thoughts agreeable as well as useful. Many complain of neglect who never tried to attract regard. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man guilty of poverty easily believes himself suspected. -- Samuel Johnson
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I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the lord chancellor, upon a due consideration of the characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter. -- Samuel Johnson
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The arguments for purity of life fail of their due influence, not because they have been considered and confuted, but because they have been passed over without consideration. -- Samuel Johnson
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If we will have the kindness of others, we must endure their follies -- Samuel Johnson
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To tell your own secrets is generally folly, but that folly is without guilt; to communicate those with which we are intrusted is always treachery, and treachery for the most part combined with folly. -- Samuel Johnson
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Everybody knows worse of himself than he knows of other men. -- Samuel Johnson
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Politeness is one of those advantages which we never estimate rightly but by the inconvenience of its loss. -- Samuel Johnson
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The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends. -- Samuel Johnson
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As soon as I enter the door of a tavern, I experience oblivion of care, and a freedom from solicitude. There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn. -- Samuel Johnson
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Parents are by no means exempt from the intoxication of dominion. -- Samuel Johnson
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The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new. -- Samuel Johnson
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Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures. -- Samuel Johnson
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Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nothing is more common than to find men, whose works are now totally neglected, mentioned with praises by their contemporaries as the oracles of their age, and the legislators of science. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one. -- Samuel Johnson
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As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly. -- Samuel Johnson
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Men who could willingly resign the luxuries and sensual pleasures of a large fortune cannot consent to live without the grandeur and the homage. -- Samuel Johnson
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Spite and ill-nature are among the most expensive luxuries in life. -- Samuel Johnson
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Genius is that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates. -- Samuel Johnson
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My congratulations to you, sir. Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good. -- Samuel Johnson
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Ignorance cannot always be inferred from inaccuracy; knowledge is not always present. -- Samuel Johnson
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Enquirer, cease, Petitions yet remain,
Which Heav'n may hear, nor deem Religion vain.
Still raise for Good the supplicating Voice,
But leave to Heav'n the Measure and the Choice. -- Samuel Johnson
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No man reads a book of science from pure inclination. The books that we do read with pleasure are light compositions, which contain a quick succession of events. -- Samuel Johnson
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Reproof should not exhaust its power upon petty failings. -- Samuel Johnson
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It very seldom happens to a man that his business is his pleasure. -- Samuel Johnson
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Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge is to a forest. -- Samuel Johnson
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In Shakespeare's plays, the mourner hastening to bury his friend is all the time colliding with the reveller hastening to his wine. -- Samuel Johnson
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Occupation alone is happiness. -- Samuel Johnson
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Cunning differs from wisdom as twilight from open day. -- Samuel Johnson
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AGONISTES (AGONI'STES) n.s.[ Gr.]A prize-fighter; one that contends at any public solemnity for a prize. Milton has so stiled his tragedy, because Sampson was called out to divert the Philistines with feats of strength. -- Samuel Johnson
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Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect. -- Samuel Johnson
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Love has no great influences upon the sum of life. -- Samuel Johnson
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Pound St. Paul's Church into atoms, and consider any single atom; it is to be sure, good for nothing; but put all these atoms together, and you have St. Paul's Church. So it is with human felicity, which is made up of many ingredients, each of which may be shown to be very insignificant. -- Samuel Johnson
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Attack is the reaction. I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds. -- Samuel Johnson
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We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor -- Samuel Johnson
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Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it. -- Samuel Johnson
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The traveler that resolutely follows a rough and winding path will sooner reach the end of his journey than he that is always changing his direction, and wastes the hour of daylight in looking for smoother ground and shorter passages. -- Samuel Johnson
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Ease, a neutral state between pain and pleasure ... if it is not rising into pleasure will be falling towards pain. -- Samuel Johnson
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Cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out. -- Samuel Johnson
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I have found the world kinder than I expected, but less just. -- Samuel Johnson
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Round numbers are always false. -- Samuel Johnson
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Friendship is seldom lasting but between equals, or where the superiority on one side is reduced by some equivalent advantage on the other. -- Samuel Johnson
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Studious to please, yet not ashamed to fail. -- Samuel Johnson
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To grieve for evils is often wrong; but it is much more wrong to grieve without them. All sorrow that lasts longer than its cause is morbid, and should be shaken off as an attack of melancholy, as the forerunner of a greater evil than poverty or pain. -- Samuel Johnson
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I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to he right. -- Samuel Johnson
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The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public. -- Samuel Johnson
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Officious, innocent, sincere, Of every friendless name the friend. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm. -- Samuel Johnson
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Most vices may be committed very genteelly: a man may debauch his friend's wife genteelly: he may cheat at cards genteelly -- Samuel Johnson
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Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one. -- Samuel Johnson
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None are happy but by anticipation of change. -- Samuel Johnson
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As a man advances in life he gets what is better than admiration -judgement to estimate things at their own value. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow. -- Samuel Johnson
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A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists without any practical regard to morals and religion; he may be learning not to live but to reason ... while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unreformed. -- Samuel Johnson
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PU'RIST: one superstitiously nice in the use of words. -- Samuel Johnson
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Pour forth thy fervors for a healthful mind,
Obedient passions, and a will resigned -- Samuel Johnson
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The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers. -- Samuel Johnson
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The lust of gold succeeds the rage of conquest; The lust of gold, unfeeling and remorseless! The last corruption of degenerate man. -- Samuel Johnson
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I have two very cogent reasons for not printing any list of subscribers; one, that I have lost all the names, the other, that I have spent all the money. -- Samuel Johnson
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He who praises everybody, praises nobody. -- Samuel Johnson
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To be flattered is grateful, even when we know that our praises are not believed by those who pronounce them; for they prove, at least, our power, and show that our favour is valued, since it is purchased by the meanness of falsehood. -- Samuel Johnson
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His death eclipsed the gayety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure. -- Samuel Johnson
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The mental disease of the present generation is impatience of study, contempt of the great masters of ancient wisdom, and a disposition to rely wholly upon unassisted genius and natural sagacity. -- Samuel Johnson
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The public pleasures of far the greater part of mankind are counterfeit. -- Samuel Johnson
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Man's chief merit consists in resisting the impulses of his nature. -- Samuel Johnson
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May, notwithstanding, be questioned whether, except his bible, he ever read a book entirely through. Late in life, if any man praised a book in his presence, he was sure to ask, "Did you read it through?" If the answer was in the affirmative, he did not seem willing to believe it. -- Samuel Johnson
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I soon found that wit, like every other power, has its boundaries; that its success depends upon the aptitude of others to receive impressions; and that as some bodies, indissoluble by heat, can set the furnace and crucible at defiance, there are min -- Samuel Johnson
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Study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves -- Samuel Johnson
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Instead of rating the man by his performances, we rate too frequently the performances by the man. -- Samuel Johnson
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When the original is well chosen and judiciously copied, the imitator often arrives at excellence which he could never have attained without direction; for few are formed with abilities to discover new possibilities of excellence, and to distinguish themselves by means never tried before. -- Samuel Johnson
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If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair. -- Samuel Johnson
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Let me rejoice in the light which Thou hast imparted; let me serve Thee with active zeal, humbled confidence, and wait with patient expectation for the time in which the soul which Thou receivest shall be satisfied with knowledge. -- Samuel Johnson
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So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something. -- Samuel Johnson
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Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God. -- Samuel Johnson
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All industry must be excited by hope. -- Samuel Johnson
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I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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A good wife is like the ivy which beautifies the building to which it clings, twining its tendrils more lovingly as time converts the ancient edifice into a ruin. -- Samuel Johnson
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A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity; nor is that curiosity ever more agreeably or usefully employed, than in examining the laws and customs of foreign nations. -- Samuel Johnson
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I am sorry I have not learnt to play at cards. It is very useful in life: it generates kindness, and consolidates society. -- Samuel Johnson
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ADVENTITIOUS (ADVENTI'TIOUS) adj.[adventitius, Lat.]That which advenes; accidental; supervenient; extrinsically added, not essentially inherent. -- Samuel Johnson
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A country gentleman should bring his lady to visit London as soon as he can, that they may have agreeable topicks for conversation when they are by themselves. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends. -- Samuel Johnson
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Mutual complacency is the atmosphere of conjugal love. -- Samuel Johnson
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Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs. -- Samuel Johnson
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The great effect of friendship is beneficence, yet by the first act of uncommon kindness it is endangered. -- Samuel Johnson
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Ignorance is mere privation by which nothing can be produced: it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless and torpid for want of attraction: and, without knowing why, we always rejoice when we learn, and grieve when we forget. -- Samuel Johnson
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If in an actor there appears an utter vacancy of meaning, a frigid equality, a stupid languor, a torpid apathy, the greatest kindness that can be shown him is a speedy sentence of expulsion. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age. -- Samuel Johnson
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Sir, it is wrong to stir up law-suits; but when once it is certain that a law-suit is to go on, there is nothing wrong in a lawyer's endeavouring that he shall have the benefit, rather than another. -- Samuel Johnson
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There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that travels in theory has no inconveniences. -- Samuel Johnson
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You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not - silence is the sharper sword. -- Samuel Johnson
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When speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four. -- Samuel Johnson
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Let him that desires to see others happy, make haste to give while his gift can be enjoyed, and remember that every moment of delay takes away something from the value of his benefaction. -- Samuel Johnson
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ACCEPTILATION (ACCEPTILA'TION) n.s.[acceptilatio, Lat.]A term of the civil law,importing the remission of a debt by an acquittance from the creditor, testifying the receipt of money which has never been paid. -- Samuel Johnson
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Dishonor waits on perfidy. A man should blush to think a falsehood; it is the crime of cowards. -- Samuel Johnson
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Slavery is now nowhere more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty. -- Samuel Johnson
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Surely, it is much easier to respect a man who has always had respect, than to respect a man who we know was last year no better than ourselves, and will be no better next year. -- Samuel Johnson
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The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every cold empirick, when his heart is expanded by a successful experiment, swells into a theorist ... -- Samuel Johnson
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Tea's proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.
(Essay on Tea, 1757.) -- Samuel Johnson
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An old friend never can be found, and nature has provided that he cannot easily be lost. -- Samuel Johnson
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But grant, the virtues of a temp'rate prime
Bless with an age exempt from scorn or crime;
An age that melts with unperceived decay,
And glides in modest Innocence away -- Samuel Johnson
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Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them. -- Samuel Johnson
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Methinks, though a man had all science, and all principles, yet it might not be amiss to have some conscience.Tillots.Pref.5. Wrong; -- Samuel Johnson
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Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich. -- Samuel Johnson
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When there is no hope, there can be no endeavor. -- Samuel Johnson
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In narration he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction and a wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imperfectly in many words, which might have been more plainly delivered in few. -- Samuel Johnson
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His comedy pleases by the thoughts and the language, and his tragedy for the greater part by incident and action. His tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy to be instinct. -- Samuel Johnson
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The life of a conscientious clergyman is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls. -- Samuel Johnson
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Unconstraint is the grace of conversation. -- Samuel Johnson
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Repentance, however difficult to be practiced, is, if it be explained without superstition, easily understood. Repentance is the relinquishment of any practice from the conviction that it has offended God. -- Samuel Johnson
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Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits; the other recreates and revives them. -- Samuel Johnson
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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 -- Samuel Johnson
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Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence. -- Samuel Johnson
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Words are daughters of earth but ideas are sons of heaven. -- Samuel Johnson
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If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance. -- Samuel Johnson
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Ladies, stock and tend your hive,
Trifle not at thirty-five;
For, howe'er we boast and strive,
Life declines from thirty-five;
He that ever hopes to thrive
Must begin by thirty-five. -- Samuel Johnson
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Exactness is first obtained, and afterwards elegance. But diction, merely vocal, is always in its childhood. As no man leaves his eloquence behind him, the new generations have all to learn. There may possibly be books without a polished language, but there can be no polished language without books. -- Samuel Johnson
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Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves. -- Samuel Johnson
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The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape. -- Samuel Johnson
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Unintelligible language is a lantern without a light. -- Samuel Johnson
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When female minds are embittered by age or solitude, their malignity is generally exerted in a rigorous and spiteful superintendence of domestic trifles. -- Samuel Johnson
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The botanist looks upon the astronomer as a being unworthy of his regard; and he that is glowing great and happy by electrifying a bottle wonders how the world can be engaged by trifling prattle about war and peace. -- Samuel Johnson
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Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation. -- Samuel Johnson
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It was his peculiar happiness that he scarcely ever found a stranger whom he did not leave a friend; but it must likewise be added, that he had not often a friend long without obliging him to become a stranger. -- Samuel Johnson
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The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights. -- Samuel Johnson
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London! the needy villain's general home, The common sewer of Paris and of Rome! With eager thirst, by folly or by fate, Sucks in the dregs of each corrupted state. -- Samuel Johnson
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No man is defeated without some resentment which will be continued with obstinacy while he believes himself in the right, and asserted with bitterness, if even to his own conscience he is detected in the wrong. -- Samuel Johnson
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Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgment and friendship are like being enlivened. -- Samuel Johnson
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He ended, and his words impression leftOf much amazement to th' infernal crew,Distracted and surpris'd with deep dismayAt these sad tidings.Milton'sParadise Regained,b. i.3. -- Samuel Johnson
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Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings; let us be therefore cautious of how we strip her. -- Samuel Johnson
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Sleep is a state in which a great part of every life is passed. No animal has yet been discovered, whose existence is not varied with intervals of insensibility; and some late philosophers have extended the empire of sleep over the vegetable world. -- Samuel Johnson
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There are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by. -- Samuel Johnson
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When first the college rolls receive his name,
The young enthusiast quilts his ease for fame;
Through all his veins the fever of renown
Burns from the strong contagion of the gown -- Samuel Johnson
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Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle; for the calamities of life, like the necessities of Nature, are calls to labor and diligence. -- Samuel Johnson
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You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables. -- Samuel Johnson
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That observation which is called knowledge of the world will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good. -- Samuel Johnson
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The dependant who cultivates delicacy in himself very little consults his own tranquillity. -- Samuel Johnson
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To ACCEND (ACCE'ND) v.a.[accendo, Lat.]To kindle, to set on fire; a word very rarely used. Our devotion, if sufficiently accended, would, as theirs, burn up innumerable books of this sort.Decay of Piety. -- Samuel Johnson
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No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that resigns his peace to little casualties, and suffers the course of his life to be interrupted for fortuitous inadvertencies or offences, delivers up himself to the direction of the wind, and loses all that constancy and equanimity which constitutes the chief praise of a wise man. -- Samuel Johnson
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You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it; for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle. -- Samuel Johnson
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As long as one lives he will have need of repentance. -- Samuel Johnson
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In matters of business, no woman stops at integrity. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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Some species there be of middle natures, that is, of bird and beast, as batts; yet are their parts so set together, that we cannot define the beginning or end of either, there being a commixtion of both, rather than adaptation or cement of the one unto the other.Brown'sVulgar Errours,b. iii. c. ii. -- Samuel Johnson
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He who fails to please in his salutation and address is at once rejected, and never obtains an opportunity of showing his latest excellences or essential qualities. -- Samuel Johnson
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No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it ... There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government. -- Samuel Johnson
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As all error is meanness, it is incumbent on every man who consults his own dignity, to retract it as soon as he discovers it. -- Samuel Johnson
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People may be taken in once, who imagine that an author is greater in private life than other men. -- Samuel Johnson
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Enlarge my life with multitude of days, In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays; Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know, That life protracted is protracted woe. Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the passages of joy. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is scarcely credible to what degree discernment may be dazzled by the mist of pride, and wisdom infatuated by the intoxication of flattery. -- Samuel Johnson
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A vow is a snare for sin -- Samuel Johnson
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Very few live by choice. Every man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, and with which he did not always willingly cooperate; and therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbor better than his own. -- Samuel Johnson
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Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use. -- Samuel Johnson
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The stream of Time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare. -- Samuel Johnson
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The desires of man increase with his acquisitions. -- Samuel Johnson
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An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty. Men who have practiced tortures on animals without pity, relating them without shame, how can they still hold their heads among human beings? -- Samuel Johnson
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Man is a transitory being, and his designs must partake of the imperfections their author. -- Samuel Johnson
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We have now learned that rashness and imprudence will not be deterred from taking credit; let us try whether fraud and avarice may be more easily restrained from giving it. -- Samuel Johnson
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Present opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages. -- Samuel Johnson
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God Himself, sir, does not propose to judge a man until his life is over. Why should you and I? -- Samuel Johnson
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To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship. -- Samuel Johnson
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It may be laid down as a position which seldom deceives, that when a man cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea. -- Samuel Johnson
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Friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness and its permanence from the other. -- Samuel Johnson
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Whatever advantage we snatch beyond a certain portion allotted us by at nature, is like money spent before it is due, which, at the time of regular payment, will be missed and regretted. -- Samuel Johnson
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Terrestrial happiness is of short duration. The brightness of the flame is wasting its fuel; the fragrant flower is passing away in its own odors. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit. -- Samuel Johnson
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You may translate books of science exactly ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written. -- Samuel Johnson
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I do not much wish well to discoveries, for I am always afraid they will end in conquest and robbery. -- Samuel Johnson
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This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to. -- Samuel Johnson
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For patience, sov'reign o'er transmuted ill. -- Samuel Johnson
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To be of no Church is dangerous. -- Samuel Johnson
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What is said upon a subject is gathered from an hundred people. -- Samuel Johnson
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They make a rout about universal liberty, without considering that all that is to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty. -- Samuel Johnson
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As every one is pleased with imagining that he knows something not yet commonly divulged, secret history easily gains credit; but it is for the most part believed only while it circulates in whispers, and when once it is openly told, is openly refuted. -- Samuel Johnson
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The love of fame is a passion natural and universal, which no man, however high or mean, however wise or ignorant, was yet able to despise. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every man may be observed to have a certain strain of lamentation, some peculiar theme of complaint on which he dwells in his moments of dejection. -- Samuel Johnson
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Stand Firm for your country, and become a man Honour'd and lov'd: It were a noble life, To be found dead, embracing her. -- Samuel Johnson
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I have all my life long been lying in bed till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good. -- Samuel Johnson
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To tell of disappointment and misery, to thicken the darkness of futurity, and perplex the labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a delicious employment of the poets -- Samuel Johnson
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If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards. -- Samuel Johnson
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O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant. -- Samuel Johnson
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Wise married women don't trouble themselves about infidelity in their husbands. -- Samuel Johnson
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Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation. -- Samuel Johnson
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Misfortunes should always be expected. -- Samuel Johnson
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Such is the pleasure of projecting that many content themselves with a succession of visionary schemes, and wear out their allotted time in the calm amusement of contriving what they never attempt or hope to execute. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is not easy to surround life with any circumstances in which youth will not be delightful. -- Samuel Johnson
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The habit of looking on the bright side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a year. -- Samuel Johnson
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This is my history; like all other histories, a narrative of misery. -- Samuel Johnson
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The care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature. -- Samuel Johnson
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The morality of an action depends on the motive from which we act. If I fling half a crown to a beggar with intention to break his head and he picks it up and buy victuals with it, the physical effect is good. But with respect to me the action is very wrong. -- Samuel Johnson
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Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine, why should you number up my cups of tea? -- Samuel Johnson
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The true effect of genuine politeness seems to be rather ease than pleasure. -- Samuel Johnson
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Hell is paved with good intentions. -- Samuel Johnson
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The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression. -- Samuel Johnson
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Reason elevates our thoughts as high as the stars, and leads us through the vast space of this mighty fabric; yet it comes far short of the real extent of our corporeal being. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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Prosperity's right hand is industry and her left hand is frugality. -- Samuel Johnson
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In a man's letters his soul lies naked. -- Samuel Johnson
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Those whose abilities or knowledge incline them most to deviate from the general round of life are recalled from eccentricity by the laws of their existence. -- Samuel Johnson
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Laws teach us to know when we commit injury and when we suffer it. -- Samuel Johnson
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A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain. -- Samuel Johnson
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Political liberty is only good insofar as it produces private liberty. -- Samuel Johnson
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Liberty is the parent of truth, but truth and decency are sometimes at variance. All men and all propositions are to be treated here as they deserve, and there are many who have no claim either to respect or decency. -- Samuel Johnson
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Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor. -- Samuel Johnson
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No man can have much kindness for him by whom he does not believe himself esteemed, and nothing so evidently proves esteem as imitation. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession. -- Samuel Johnson
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You never find people laboring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful income. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man who always talks for fame never can be pleasing. The man who talks to unburthen his mind is the man to delight you. -- Samuel Johnson
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Never speak of a man in his own presence. It is always indelicate, and may be offensive . -- Samuel Johnson
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Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle. -- Samuel Johnson
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Levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves. -- Samuel Johnson
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These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes. -- Samuel Johnson
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Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both. -- Samuel Johnson
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There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance. -- Samuel Johnson
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Condemned to Hope's delusive mine,
As on we toil from day to day,
By sudden blasts or slow decline
Our social comforts drop away. -- Samuel Johnson
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[The poet] must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place. -- Samuel Johnson
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Greece appears to be the fountain of knowledge; Rome of elegance -- Samuel Johnson
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We are told, that the black bear is innocent; but I should not like to trust myself with him. -- Samuel Johnson
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The actuality of these spiritual qualities is thus imprisoned, though their potentiality be not quite destroyed; and thus a crass, extended, impenetrable, passive, divisible, unintelligent substance is generated, which we call matter.Cheyn.Phil. Prin. -- Samuel Johnson
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I advised Chambers, and would advise every young man beginning to compose, to do it as fast as he can, to get a habit of having his mind to start promptly; it is so much more difficult to improve in speed than in accuracy. -- Samuel Johnson
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We ought not to raise expectations which it is not in our power to satisfy.-It is more pleasing to see smoke brightening into flame, than flame sinking into smoke. -- Samuel Johnson
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Try and forget our cares and sickness, and contribute, as we can to the happiness of each other. -- Samuel Johnson
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Pride is seldom delicate; it will please itself with very mean advantages. -- Samuel Johnson
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Falsehoods of convenience or vanity, falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible ensues, except the general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and once uttered are sullenly supported. -- Samuel Johnson
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ADVERSARIA (ADVERSA'RIA) n.s.[Lat. A book, as it should seem, in which Debtor and Creditor were set in opposition.]A common-place; a book to note in. These parchments are supposed to have been St. Paul's adversaria.Bull'sSermons. -- Samuel Johnson
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Most men think indistinctly, and therefore cannot speak with exactness ... -- Samuel Johnson
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We often need reminding even if we do not often need educating. -- Samuel Johnson
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At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest. -- Samuel Johnson
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Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed. -- Samuel Johnson
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A Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist who does not love Scotland better than truth. -- Samuel Johnson
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Never believe extraordinary characters which you hear of people. Depend upon it, they are exaggerated. You do not see one man shoot a great deal higher than another. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is necessary to the success of flattery, that it be accommodated to particular circumstances or characters, and enter the heart on that side where the passions are ready to receive it. -- Samuel Johnson
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I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations. -- Samuel Johnson
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No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring. -- Samuel Johnson
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Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content. No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of the spring: no man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source and from the mouth of the Nile. -- Samuel Johnson
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The limbs will quiver and move after the soul is gone. -- Samuel Johnson
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Attainment is followed by neglect, possession by disgust, and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to many another course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last -- Samuel Johnson
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All to whom want is terrible, upon whatever principle, ought to think themselves obliged to learn the sage maxims of our parsimonious ancestors, and attain the salutary arts of contracting expense; for without economy none can be rich, and with it few can be poor. -- Samuel Johnson
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Composition is for the most part an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements. -- Samuel Johnson
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To me - the choice of life is become less important; I hope hereafter to think only on the choice of eternity. -- Samuel Johnson
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Fears of the brave and follies of the wise. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is much easier not to write like a man than to write like a woman. -- Samuel Johnson
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No one will persist long in helping someone who will not help themselves. -- Samuel Johnson
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In youth, it is common to measure right and wrong by the opinion of the world, and in age, to act without any measure but interest, and to lose shame without substituting virtue. -- Samuel Johnson
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An author places himself uncalled before the tribunal of criticism and solicits fame at the hazard of disgrace. -- Samuel Johnson
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Deviation from Nature is deviation from happiness. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nothing is more common than mutual dislike, where mutual approbation is particularly expected. -- Samuel Johnson
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Discord generally operates in little things; it is inflamed ... by contrariety of taste oftener than principles. -- Samuel Johnson
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An Englishman is content to say nothing when he has nothing to say. -- Samuel Johnson
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Of many, imagined blessings it may be doubted whether he that wants or possesses them had more reason to be satisfied with his lot. -- Samuel Johnson
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Pope had been flattered till he thought himself one of the moving powers of the system of life. When he talked of laying down his pen, those who sat round him intreated and implored; and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that they went away and laughed. -- Samuel Johnson
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He who aspires to be a serious wine drinker must drink claret. -- Samuel Johnson
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Men, however distinguished by external accidents or intrinsick qualities, have all the same wants, the same pains, and, as far as the senses are consulted, the same pleasures. -- Samuel Johnson
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which has the power or quality of adding. The additory fiction gives to a great man a larger share of reputation than belongs to him, to enable him to serve some good end or purpose.Arbuthnot'sArt of political Lying. -- Samuel Johnson
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Life protracted is protracted woe. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow. -- Samuel Johnson
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To forget, or pretend to do so, to return a borrowed article, is the meanest sort of petty theft. -- Samuel Johnson
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He was so generally civil, that nobody thanked him for it. -- Samuel Johnson
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Let observation with extensive view, Survey mankind from China to Peru; Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife, And watch the busy scenes of crowded life. -- Samuel Johnson
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The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players. -- Samuel Johnson
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Long customs are not easily broken; he that attempts to change the course of his own life very often labors in vain; and how shall we do that for others, which we are seldom able to do for ourselves. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nothing [ ... ] will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome. -- Samuel Johnson
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New arts are long in the world before poets describe them; for they borrow everything from their predecessors, and commonly derive very little from nature or from life. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is in this world no real delight (excepting those of sensuality), but exchange of ideas in conversation. -- Samuel Johnson
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Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his home town: yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life; and as nothing is little to him that feels it with gre -- Samuel Johnson
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Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. -- Samuel Johnson
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Those who are in the power of evil habits must conquer them as they can; and conquered they must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be attained: but those who are not yet subject to their influence may, by timely caution, preserve their freedom; -- Samuel Johnson
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He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade. -- Samuel Johnson
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Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel. -- Samuel Johnson
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Many falsehoods are passing into uncontradicted history. -- Samuel Johnson
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I remember very well, when I was at Oxford, an old gentleman said to me, Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a stock of knowledge; for when years come upon you, you will find that poring upon books will be but an irksome task. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every man that has felt pain knows how little all other comforts can gladden him to whom health is denied. Yet who is there does not sometimes hazard it for the enjoyment of an hour? -- Samuel Johnson
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I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom. -- Samuel Johnson
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See nations slowly wise, and meanly just, to buried merit raise the tardy bust. -- Samuel Johnson
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Some claim a place in the list of patriots, by an acrimonious and unremitting opposition to the court. This mark is by no means infallible. Patriotism is not necessarily included in rebellion. A man may hate his king, yet not love his country. -- Samuel Johnson
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Hunger is never delicate. -- Samuel Johnson
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Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every man is prompted by the love of himself to imagine that he possesses some qualities superior, either in kind or degree, to those which he sees allotted to the rest of the world. -- Samuel Johnson
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Some people wave their dogmatic thinking until their own reason is entangled. -- Samuel Johnson
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And buxom, which means only obedient, is now made, in familiar phrases, to stand for wanton; because in an ancient form of marriage, before the Reformation, the bride promised complaisance and obedience, in these terms: "I will be bonair and buxom in bed and at board. -- Samuel Johnson
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If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur. -- Samuel Johnson
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Wit is that which has been often thought, but never before was well expressed. -- Samuel Johnson
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He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into the short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind. -- Samuel Johnson
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AMPHISBAeNA (AMPHISBAe'NA) n.s.[Lat. serpent supposed to have two heads. That the amphisbaena, that is, a smaller kind of serpent, which moveth forward and backward, hath two heads, or one at either extreme, was affirmed by Nicander, and others.Brown'sVulgar Errours,b. iii. -- Samuel Johnson
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To ADMOVE (ADMO'VE) v.a.[admoveo, Lat.]To bring one thing to another. If, unto the powder of loadstone or iron, we admove the northpole of the loadstone, the powders, or small divisions, will erect and conform themselves thereto.Brown'sVulgar Errours,b. ii. -- Samuel Johnson
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We all live in the hope of pleasing somebody; and the pleasure of pleasing ought to be greatest, and always will be greatest, when our endeavors are exerted in consequence of our duty. -- Samuel Johnson
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ANTRE (A'NTRE) [antre, Fr. antrum, Lat.]A cavern; a cave; a den. With all my travels history:Wherein of antres vast, and desarts idle,It was my hent to speak.Shakesp.Othello. -- Samuel Johnson
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All history was at first oral. -- Samuel Johnson
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I know not any crime so great that a man could contrive to commit as poisoning the sources of eternal truth. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality. -- Samuel Johnson
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ADULTERINE (ADU'LTERINE) n.s.[adulterine, Fr. adulterinus, Lat.]A child born of an adulteress:a term of canon law. -- Samuel Johnson
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ANSWER-JOBBER (A'NSWER-JOBBER) n.s.[from answer and jobber.]He that makes a trade of writing answers. What disgusts me from having any thing to do with answer-jobbers, is, that they have no conscience.Swift. -- Samuel Johnson
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Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all. -- Samuel Johnson
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Where there is emulation, there will be vanity; where there is vanity, there will be folly. -- Samuel Johnson
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But to the particular species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some early conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and emulation. -- Samuel Johnson
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More is learned in a public than in a private school, from emulation. There is the collision of mind with mind, or the radiation of many minds pointing to one center. -- Samuel Johnson
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A woman of fortune being used the handling of money, spends it judiciously; but a woman who gets the command of money for the first time upon her marriage, has such a gust in spending it, that she throws it away with great profusion. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning. -- Samuel Johnson
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Everybody loves to have things which please the palate put in their way, without trouble or preparation. -- Samuel Johnson
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AGHAST (AGHA'ST) adj.[either the participle of agaze,(see AGAZE) and then to be written agazed, or agast,or from a and gast, a ghost, which the present orthography favours; perhaps they were originally different words.]Struck with horrour, as -- Samuel Johnson
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The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment. -- Samuel Johnson
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Men go to sea, before they know the unhappiness of that way of life; and when they have come to know it, they cannot escape from it, because it is then too late to choose another profession; as indeed is generally the case with men, when they have once engaged in any particular way of life. -- Samuel Johnson
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Locke, whom there is no reason to suspect of being a favorer of idleness or libertinism, has advanced that whoever hopes to employ any part of his time with efficacy and vigor must allow some of it to pass with trifles. -- Samuel Johnson
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Accustom your children constantly to this; if a thing happened at one window and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end -- Samuel Johnson
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Sir, if a man has a mind to prance, he must study at Christ Church and All Souls. -- Samuel Johnson
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Courtesy and good humor are often found with little real worth. -- Samuel Johnson
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We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice. -- Samuel Johnson
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In his comic scenes, Shakespeare seems to produce, without labor, what no labor can improve. -- Samuel Johnson
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The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are. -- Samuel Johnson
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They who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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The cure for the greatest part of human miseries is not radical, but palliative. -- Samuel Johnson
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The young man, who intends no ill,
Believes that none is intended, and therefore
Acts with openness and candor: but his father, having suffered the injuries of fraud, is impelled to suspect, and too often allured to practice it. -- Samuel Johnson
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The commodiousness of money is indeed great; but there are some advantages which money cannot buy, and which therefore no wise man will by the love of money be tempted to forego. -- Samuel Johnson
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Why, Sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment. -- Samuel Johnson
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Those who attempt nothing themselves think every thing easily performed, and consider the unsuccessful always as criminal. -- Samuel Johnson
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When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped. -- Samuel Johnson
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Contempt is a kind of gangrene which, if it seizes one part of a character, corrupts all the rest by degrees. -- Samuel Johnson
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The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little. -- Samuel Johnson
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Profuseness is a cruel and crafty demon, that gradually involves her followers in dependence and debt; that is, fetters them with irons that enter into their souls. -- Samuel Johnson
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The number of such as live without the ardour of inquiry is very small, though many content themselves with cheap amusements, and waste their lives in researches of no importance. -- Samuel Johnson
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Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not. -- Samuel Johnson
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Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life. -- Samuel Johnson
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There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money. -- Samuel Johnson
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ADJUTOR (ADJU'TOR) n.s.[adjutor, Lat.] A helper.Dict. ADJUTORY (ADJU'TORY) adj.[adjutorius, Lat.] That which helps.Dict. -- Samuel Johnson
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Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity; but art and nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects, and every moment produces something new to him who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation. -- Samuel Johnson
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Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own. -- Samuel Johnson
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This man [Chesterfield], I thought, had been a Lord among wits; but I find he is only a wit among Lords. -- Samuel Johnson
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Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent. -- Samuel Johnson
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The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope. -- Samuel Johnson
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A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is always something a woman will prefer to the truth. -- Samuel Johnson
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There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, toil, envy, want, and patron. -- Samuel Johnson
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But though it cannot be reasonable not to gain happiness for fear of losing it, yet it must be confessed, that in proportion to the pleasure of possession, will be for some time our sorrow for the loss. -- Samuel Johnson
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Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it. -- Samuel Johnson
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Among the numerous stratagems by which pride endeavors to recommend folly to regard, there is scarcely one that meets with less success than affectation, or a perpetual disguise of the real character by fictitious appearances. -- Samuel Johnson
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Actions are visible, though motives are secret. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge. -- Samuel Johnson
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Self-love is a busy prompter. -- Samuel Johnson
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A blaze first pleases and then tires the sight. -- Samuel Johnson
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Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, - attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia. -- Samuel Johnson
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More knowledge may be gained of a man's real character by a short conversation with one of his servants than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral. -- Samuel Johnson
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APHETA (APHE'TA) n.s.[with astrologers.] The name of the plant, which is imagined to be the giver or disposer of life in a nativity.Dict. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is our first duty to serve society, and after we have done that, we may attend wholly to the salvation of our own souls. -- Samuel Johnson
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Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor. -- Samuel Johnson
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To prevent evil is the great end of government, the end for which vigilance and severity are properly employed. -- Samuel Johnson
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Is there such depravity in man as that he should injure another without benefit to himself? -- Samuel Johnson
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Learn the leading precognita of all things-no need to turn over leaf by leaf, but grasp the trunk hard and you will shake all the branches.
Advice cherished by Samuel Johnson that that, if one is to master any subject, one must first discover its general principles. -- Samuel Johnson
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To use two languages familiarly and without contaminating one by the other, is very difficult; and to use more than two is hardly to be hoped. The prizes which some have received for their multiplicity of languages may be sufficient to excite industry, but can hardly generate confidence. -- Samuel Johnson
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When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood. -- Samuel Johnson
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The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction. -- Samuel Johnson
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ADIAPHORY (ADIA'PHORY) n.s.[Gr.]Neutrality; indifference. -- Samuel Johnson
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All imposture weakens confidence and chills benevolence. -- Samuel Johnson
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Faults and defects every work of man must have. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that wishes to see his country robbed of its rights cannot be a patriot. -- Samuel Johnson
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That all who are happy are equally happy is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. A small drinking glass and a large one may be equally full, but the large one holds more than the small. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is not uncommon to charge the difference between promise and performance, between profession and reality, upon deep design and studied deceit; but the truth is, that there is very little hypocrisy in the world. -- Samuel Johnson
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Life admits not of delays; when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased. -- Samuel Johnson
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The hour of reformation is always delayed; every delay gives vice another opportunity of fortifying itself by habit. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk. -- Samuel Johnson
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Mutual cowardice keeps us in peace. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that voluntarily continues in ignorance, is guilty of all the crimes which ignorance produces. -- Samuel Johnson
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Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past without looking forward to the future. -- Samuel Johnson
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APOPHTHEGM (A'POPHTHEGM) n.s. remarkable saying; a valuable maxim uttered on some sudden occasion. -- Samuel Johnson
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Though it is evident, that not more than one age or people can deserve the censure of being more averse from learning than any other, yet at all times knowledge must have encountered impediments, and wit been mortified with contempt, or harassed with persecution. -- Samuel Johnson
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People have now a-days got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do as much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. -- Samuel Johnson
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Gaiety is to good-humor as animal perfumes to vegetable fragrance. The one overpowers weak spirits, the other recreates and revives them. Gaiety seldom fails to give some pain; good-humor boasts no faculties which every one does not believe in his own power, and pleases principally by not offending. -- Samuel Johnson
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Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult. -- Samuel Johnson
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A fallible being will fail somewhere. -- Samuel Johnson
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In solitude we have our dreams to ourselves, and in company we agree to dream in concert. -- Samuel Johnson
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The main of life is composed of small incidents and petty occurrences; of wishes for objects not remote, and grief for disappointments of no fatal consequence ... -- Samuel Johnson
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A transition from an author's book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city. -- Samuel Johnson
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Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination. -- Samuel Johnson
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I do not see, Sir, that it is reasonable for a man to be angry at another, whom a woman has preferred to him; but angry he is, no doubt; and he is loath to be angry at himself. -- Samuel Johnson
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His most frequent ailment was the headache which he used to relieve by inhaling the steam of coffee. -- Samuel Johnson
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He who is extravagant will quickly become poor; and poverty will enforce dependence, and invite corruption. -- Samuel Johnson
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The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in a few words. -- Samuel Johnson
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The synonyme of usury is ruin. -- Samuel Johnson
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Men who stand in the highest ranks of society seldom hear of their faults; if by any accident an opprobrious clamour reaches their ears, flattery is always at hand to pour in her opiates, to quiet conviction and obtund remorse. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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From Bard, to Bard, the frigid Caution crept,
Till Declamation roar'd, while Passion slept. -- Samuel Johnson
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To preserve health is a moral and religious duty, for health is the basis of all social virtues. We can no longer be useful when not well. -- Samuel Johnson
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The charm of London is that you are never glad or sorry for ten minutes together; in the country you are one or the other for weeks. -- Samuel Johnson
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When the eye or the imagination is struck with an uncommon work, the next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it was performed -- Samuel Johnson
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In questions of law or of fact conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him the rights of another man; they must be known by rational investigation or historical inquiry. -- Samuel Johnson
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I should as soon think of contradicting a bishop -- Samuel Johnson
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Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. -- Samuel Johnson
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That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem. -- Samuel Johnson
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The heroes of literary history have been no less remarkable for what they have suffered than for what they have achieved. -- Samuel Johnson
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Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions. -- Samuel Johnson
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Sir, when you have seen one green field, you have seen all green fields. Let us walk down Cheapside. -- Samuel Johnson
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AMENABLE (AME'NABLE) adj.[amesnable, Fr. amener quelqu'un, in the French courts, signifies, to oblige one to appear to answer a charge exhibited against him.]Responsible; subject so as to be liable to enquiries or accounts. -- Samuel Johnson
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Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerales. -- Samuel Johnson
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The resolution of the combat is seldom equal to the vehemence of the charge. -- Samuel Johnson
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The richest author that ever grazed the common of literature. -- Samuel Johnson
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How can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false? Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives -- Samuel Johnson
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BIO'GRAPHER: A writer of lives; a relator not of the history of nations, but of the actions of particular persons. -- Samuel Johnson
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Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor. -- Samuel Johnson
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Friendship may well deserve the sacrifice of pleasure, though not of conscience. -- Samuel Johnson
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ADUNCITY (ADU'NCITY) n.s.[aduncitas, Lat.]Crookedness; flexure inwards; hookedness. There can be no question, but the aduncity of the pounces, and beaks of the hawks, is the cause of the great and habitual immorality of those animals.Arbuthnot and Pope'sMart. Scrib. -- Samuel Johnson
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I was not born for courts or great affairs;I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers.Pope. -- Samuel Johnson
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All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil. -- Samuel Johnson
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Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue. -- Samuel Johnson
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The first years of man must make provision for the last. -- Samuel Johnson
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Learn that the present hour alone is man's. -- Samuel Johnson
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Men become friends by a community of pleasures. -- Samuel Johnson
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The man who feels himself ignorant should, at least, be modest. -- Samuel Johnson
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Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is thus that mutual cowardice keeps us in peace. Were one half of mankind brave and one cowards, the brave would be always beating the cowards. Were all brave, they would lead a very uneasy life; all would be continually fighting; but being all cowards, we go on very well. -- Samuel Johnson
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ACTUOSE (ACTUO'SE) adj.[from act.]That which hath strong powers of action; a word little used. -- Samuel Johnson
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To proportion the eagerness of contest to its importance seems too hard a task for human wisdom. The pride of wit has kept ages busy in the discussion of useless questions, and the pride of power has destroyed armies, to gain or to keep unprofitable possessions. -- Samuel Johnson
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I found our speech copious without order, and energetic without rules -- Samuel Johnson
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Your work is both good and original but the part which is original is not good and the part which is good is not original! -- Samuel Johnson
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Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well. -- Samuel Johnson
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In misery's darkest cavern known, His useful care was ever nigh Where hopeless anguish pour'd his groan, And lonely want retir'd to die. -- Samuel Johnson
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When two Eglishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler -- Samuel Johnson
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To revenge reasonable incredulity by refusing evidence, is a degree of insolence with which the world is not yet acquainted; and stubborn audacity is the last refuge of guilt. -- Samuel Johnson
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He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else. -- Samuel Johnson
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In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it. -- Samuel Johnson
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Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable. -- Samuel Johnson
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Cunning has effect from the credulity of others, rather than from the abilities of those who are cunning. It requires no extraordinary talents to lie and deceive. -- Samuel Johnson
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Don't tell me of deception; a lie is a lie, whether it be a lie to the eye or a lie to the ear. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust. -- Samuel Johnson
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Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas. -- Samuel Johnson
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The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute. -- Samuel Johnson
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We may have uneasy feelings for seeing a creature in distress without pity; for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them. -- Samuel Johnson
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As pride sometimes is hid under humility, idleness if often covered by turbulence and hurry. -- Samuel Johnson
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Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult. -- Samuel Johnson
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When once a man has made celebrity necessary to his happiness, he has put it in the power of the weakest and most timorous malignity, if not to take away his satisfaction, at least to withhold it. His enemies may indulge their pride by airy negligence and gratify their malice by quiet neutrality. -- Samuel Johnson
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You cannot give me an instance of any man who is permitted to lay out his own time contriving not to have tedious hours. -- Samuel Johnson
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No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money. -- Samuel Johnson
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ABDITIVE (A'BDITIVE) adj.[from abdo, to hide.] That which has the power or quality of hiding.Dict. -- Samuel Johnson
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Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates. -- Samuel Johnson
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To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence
an exemption granted only to invariable virtue. -- Samuel Johnson
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So willing is every man to flatter himself, that the difference between approving laws, and obeying them, is frequently forgotten; he that acknowledges the obligations of morality and pleases his vanity with enforcing them to others, concludes himself zealous in the cause of virtue. -- Samuel Johnson
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To set the mind above the appetites is the end of abstinence, which if not a virtue, is the groundwork of a virtue. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets. -- Samuel Johnson
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[C]ourage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other. -- Samuel Johnson
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But, perhaps, the flatterer is not often detected; for an honest mind is not apt to suspect, and no one exerts the power of discernment with much vigour when selflove favors the deceit. -- Samuel Johnson
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His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises. -- Samuel Johnson
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Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. -- Samuel Johnson
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Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused -- Samuel Johnson
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Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether or not your flattery is worth his having. -- Samuel Johnson
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All truth is valuable, and satirical criticism may be considered as useful when it rectifies error and improves judgment; he that refines the public taste is a public benefactor. -- Samuel Johnson
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Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them. -- Samuel Johnson
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What cannot be repaired is not to be regretted. -- Samuel Johnson
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Conjecture as to things useful, is good; but conjecture as to what it would be useless to know, is very idle. -- Samuel Johnson
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I would consent to have a limb amputated to recover my spirits -- Samuel Johnson
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I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him. -- Samuel Johnson
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Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed. -- Samuel Johnson
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No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction. -- Samuel Johnson
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The prospect of penury in age is so gloomy and terrifying that every man who looks before him must resolve to avoid it; and it must be avoided generally by the science of sparing. -- Samuel Johnson
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No man can enjoy happiness without thinking that he enjoys it. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get. -- Samuel Johnson
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The parallel circumstances and kindred images to which we readily conform our minds are, above all other writings, to be found in the lives of particular persons, and therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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No man is without some quality, by the due application of which he might deserve well of the world; and whoever he be that has but little in his power should be in haste to do that little, lest he be confounded with him that can do nothing. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every author does not write for every reader -- Samuel Johnson
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We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is a maxim that no man was ever enslaved by influence while he was fit to be free. -- Samuel Johnson
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The time will come to every human being when it must be known how well he can bear to die. -- Samuel Johnson
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A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man. -- Samuel Johnson
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Since every man is obliged to promote happiness and virtue, he should be careful not to mislead unwary minds, by appearing to set too high a value upon things by which no real excellence is conferred. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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Little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it. -- Samuel Johnson
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A contempt of the monuments and the wisdom of the past, may be justly reckoned one of the reigning follies of these days, to which pride and idleness have equally contributed. -- Samuel Johnson
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Games are good or bad as to their nature; all may be perverted. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is not, perhaps, to a mind well instructed, a more painful occurrence, than the death of one we have injured without reparation. -- Samuel Johnson
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Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words. -- Samuel Johnson
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Attention and respect give pleasure, however late, or however useless. But they are not useless, when they are late, it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind. -- Samuel Johnson
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That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments ... -- Samuel Johnson
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Virtue is too often merely local. -- Samuel Johnson
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If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it? -- Samuel Johnson
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Power is gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent. -- Samuel Johnson
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A fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that hardly resembles a man. The value of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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Where necessity ends, desire and curiosity begin; and no sooner are we supplied with everything nature can demand than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites. -- Samuel Johnson
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Consider what importance to society the chastity of women is. Upon that all the property in the world depends. We hang a thief for stealing a sheep; but the unchastity of a woman transfers sheep and farm and all from the right owner. -- Samuel Johnson
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The appearance and retirement of actors are the great events of the theatrical world; and their first performances fill the pit with conjecture and prognostication, as the first actions of a new monarch agitate nations with hope and fear. -- Samuel Johnson
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Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy, affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly; the one completes a villain, the other only finishes a fop. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is ... scarcely any species of writing of which we can tell what is its essence, and what are its constituents; every new genius produces some innovation, which, when invented and approved, subverts the rules which the practice of foregoing authors had established. -- Samuel Johnson
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"Uisce Beatha" is a compounded distilled spirit being drawn on aromatics, and the Irish sort is particularly distinguished for its pleasant and mild flavour. -- Samuel Johnson
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Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction. -- Samuel Johnson
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Be not too hasty," said Imlac, "to trust or to admire the teachers of morality: they discourse like angels, but they live like men. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nature has given woman so much power that the law cannot afford to give her more. -- Samuel Johnson
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Hope is an amusement rather than a good, and adapted to none but very tranquil minds. -- Samuel Johnson
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AFFORESTATION (AFFORESTA'TION) n.s.[from afforest.] The charter de Foresta was to reform the encroachments made in the time of Richard I. and Henry II. who had made new afforestations, and much extended the rigour of the forest laws.Hales'sCommon Law of England. -- Samuel Johnson
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AFFIDATION (AFFIDA'TION) AFFIDATURE (AFFIDA'TURE) n.s.[from affido, Lat.See AFFIED.] Mutual contract; mutual oath of fidelity. Dict. -- Samuel Johnson
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Affectation is to be always distinguished from hypocrisy as being the art of counterfeiting those qualities, which we might with innocence and safety, be known to want. Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy; affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly. -- Samuel Johnson
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The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth. -- Samuel Johnson
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The joy of life is variety. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is less flogging in our great schools than formerly-but then less is learned there; so what the boys get at one end they lose at the other. -- Samuel Johnson
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We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every other enjoyment malice may destroy; every other panegyric envy may withhold; but no human power can deprive the boaster of his own encomiums. -- Samuel Johnson
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We have less reason to be surprised or offended when we find others differ from us in opinions because we very often differ from ourselves. -- Samuel Johnson
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Christianity is the highest perfection of humanity. -- Samuel Johnson
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A quibble is to Shakespeare what luminous vapours are to the traveller: he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way and sure to engulf him in the mire. -- Samuel Johnson
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Though the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of one man often make many miserable. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called, by the generality of mankind, a particular genius. -- Samuel Johnson
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Irresolution and mutability are often the faults of men whose views are wide, and whose imagination is vigorous and excursive. -- Samuel Johnson
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The composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelting to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity. -- Samuel Johnson
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A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone. -- Samuel Johnson
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AMISSION (AMI'SSION) n.s.[amissio, Lat.]Loss. -- Samuel Johnson
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Never trust a man who writes more than he reads. -- Samuel Johnson
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Friendship is not always the sequel of obligation ... -- Samuel Johnson
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All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it. -- Samuel Johnson
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He who sees different ways to the same end, will, unless he watches carefully over his own conduct, lay out too much of his attention upon the comparison of probabilities and the adjustment of expedients, and pause in the choice of his road, till some accident intercepts his journey. -- Samuel Johnson
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I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning, for that is sure good. I would let him at first read any English book which happens to engage his attention; because you have done a great deal when you have brought him to have entertainment from a book. He'll get better books afterwards. -- Samuel Johnson
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The first step to greatness is to be honest. -- Samuel Johnson
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Happiness," said he, "must be something solid and permanent, without fear and without uncertainty. -- Samuel Johnson
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The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected; and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an individual weight of calumny will be super-added. -- Samuel Johnson
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There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner? -- Samuel Johnson
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All theory is against free will; all experience is for it. -- Samuel Johnson
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Rags will always make their appearance where they have a right to do it. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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Some have little power to do good, and have likewise little strength to resist evil. -- Samuel Johnson
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Those that have done nothing in life, are not qualified to judge of those that have done little -- Samuel Johnson
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Avarice is a uniform and tractable vice; other intellectual distempers are different in different constitutions of mind. That which soothes the pride of one will offend the pride of another, but to the favor of the covetous bring money, and nothing is denied. -- Samuel Johnson
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Good sense alone is a sedate and quiescent quality, which manages its possessions well, but does not increase them; it collects few materials for its own operations, and preserves safety, but never gains supremacy. -- Samuel Johnson
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The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty. -- Samuel Johnson
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I am a friend to subordination, as most conducive to the happiness of society. There is a reciprocal pleasure in governing and being governed. -- Samuel Johnson
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Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure. -- Samuel Johnson
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Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world. -- Samuel Johnson
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Such is the uncertainty of human affairs, that security and despair are equal follies; and as it is presumption and arrogance to anticipate triumphs, it is weakness and cowardice to prog-nosticate miscarriages. -- Samuel Johnson
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Presumption will be easily corrected; but timidity is a disease of the mind more obstinate and fatal. -- Samuel Johnson
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Moderation is commonly firm, and firmness is commonly successful. -- Samuel Johnson
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Grammar, which is the art of using words properly, comprises four parts: Orthography, Etymology, Syntax, and Prosody. -- Samuel Johnson
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ALKALI (A'LKALI) n.s.[The word alkali comes from an herb, called by the Egyptians kali; by us glasswort.] This -- Samuel Johnson
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Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity. -- Samuel Johnson
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Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in one mind, but in one composition. -- Samuel Johnson
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There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is no being so poor and so contemptible, who does not think there is somebody still poorer, and still more contemptible. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that shall peruse the political pamphlets of any past reign will wonder why they were so eagerly read, or so loudly praised. -- Samuel Johnson
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To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example. -- Samuel Johnson
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If we require more perfection from women than from ourselves, it is doing them honor. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that is much flattered soon learns to flatter himself. -- Samuel Johnson
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I believe it will be found that those who marry late are best pleased with their children; and those who marry early, with their partners. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is indeed certain, that whoever attempts any common topick, will find unexpected coincidences of his thoughts with those of other writers; nor can the nicest judgment always distinguish accidental similitude from artful imitation. -- Samuel Johnson
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The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life. -- Samuel Johnson
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The balls of sight are so formed, that one man's eyes are spectacles to another, to read his heart with. -- Samuel Johnson
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Large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most common topics of falsehood. -- Samuel Johnson
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Complaints are vain; we will try to. do better another time. To-morrow and to-morrow. A few designs and a few failures, and the time of designing is past. -- Samuel Johnson
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They who look but little into futurity, have, perhaps, the quickest sensation of the present. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is a certain race of men that either imagine it their duty, or make it their amusement, to hinder the reception of every work of learning or genius, who stand as sentinels in the avenues of fame, and value themselves upon giving Ignorance and Envy the first notice of a prey. -- Samuel Johnson
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If what happens does not make us richer, we must welcome it if it makes us wiser. -- Samuel Johnson
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The necessary connexion of representatives with taxes, seems to have sunk deep into many of those minds, that admit sounds, without their meaning. -- Samuel Johnson
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Labor's face is wrinkled with the wind, and swarthy with the sun. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is better a man should be abused than forgotten. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is astonishing that any man can forbear enquiring seriously whether there is a God; whether God is just; whether this life is the only state of existence. -- Samuel Johnson
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The animadversions of critics are commonly such as may easily provoke the sedatest writer to some quickness of resentment and asperity of reply. -- Samuel Johnson
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Then with no throbs of fiery pain, No cold gradations of decay, Death broke at once the vital chain, And freed his soul the nearest way. -- Samuel Johnson
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We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure. -- Samuel Johnson
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It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept; and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence. -- Samuel Johnson
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Example is always more efficacious than precept. -- Samuel Johnson
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What is the reason that women servants ... have much lower wages than men servants ... when in fact our female house servants work much harder than the male? -- Samuel Johnson
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Justice is indispensably and universally necessary, and what is necessary must always be limited, uniform, and distinct -- Samuel Johnson
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He that is pushing his predecessors into the gulf of obscurity, cannot but sometimes suspect, that he must himself sink in like manner, and, as he stands upon the same precipice, be swept away with the same violence. -- Samuel Johnson
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The good of our present state is merely comparative, and the evil which every man feels will be sufficient to disturb and harass him if he does not know how much he escapes. -- Samuel Johnson
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Invention is almost the only literary labour which blindness cannot obstruct. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nay, Sir, those who write in them, write well, in order to be paid well. -- Samuel Johnson
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Remember that nothing will supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity long continued will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible. -- Samuel Johnson
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Whoever shall review his life, will find that the whole tenor of his conduct has been determined by some accident of no apparent moment. -- Samuel Johnson
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To be prejudiced is always to be weak; yet there are prejudices so near to laudable that they have been often praised and are always pardoned. -- Samuel Johnson
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Prejudice, not being founded on reason, cannot be removed by argument. -- Samuel Johnson
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Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject. -- Samuel Johnson
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There ambush here relentless ruffians lay, And here the fell attorney prowls for prey. -- Samuel Johnson
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Foppery is never cured; it is the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, are never rectified; once a coxcomb always a coxcomb. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is no idleness, by which we are so easily seduced, as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business, and by making the loiterer imagine that he has something to do which must not be neglected, keeps him in perpetual agitation, and hurries him rapidly from place to place. -- Samuel Johnson
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The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another. -- Samuel Johnson
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If a man has a science to learn he must regularly and resolutely advance. -- Samuel Johnson
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An epithet or metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from art degrades nature. -- Samuel Johnson
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I will take no more physick, not even my opiates; for I have prayed that I may render up my soul to God unclouded. -- Samuel Johnson
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Golf is a game in which you claim the privileges of age, and retain the playthings of childhood. -- Samuel Johnson
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If the guardian or the mother
Tell the woes of willful waste,
Scorn their counsel and their pother,
You can hang or drown at last. -- Samuel Johnson
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Hunger is never delicate; they who are seldom gorged to the full with praise may be safely fed with gross compliments, for the appetite must be satisfied before it is disgusted. -- Samuel Johnson
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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 -- Samuel Johnson
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It is wonderful what a difference learning makes upon people even in the common intercourse of life, which does not appear to be much connected with it. -- Samuel Johnson
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Few have abilities so much needed by the rest of the world as to be caressed on their own terms; and he that will not condescend to recommend himself by external embellishments must submit to the fate of just sentiment meanly expressed, and be ridiculed and forgotten before he is understood. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that never labors may know the pains of idleness, but not the pleasures. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one; no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down. -- Samuel Johnson
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By writing, you learn to write. -- Samuel Johnson
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By forbearing to do what may innocently be done, we may add hourly new vigor to resolution. -- Samuel Johnson
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The round of a passionate man's life is in contracting debts in his passion, which his virtue obliges him to pay. He spends his time in outrage and acknowledgment, injury and reparation. -- Samuel Johnson
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To ACCOUPLE (ACCO'UPLE) v.a.[accoupler, Fr.]To join, to link together. He sent a solemn embassage to treat a peace and league with the king; accoupling it with an article in the nature of a request.Bacon'sHenry VII. -- Samuel Johnson
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Though I love to spend, I hate be cheated, and I found that to build is to be robbed. -- Samuel Johnson
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Allegories drawn to great length will always break. -- Samuel Johnson
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Still we love
The evil we do, until we suffer it. -- Samuel Johnson
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The difference between coarse and refined abuse is the difference between being bruised by a club and wounded by a poisoned arrow. -- Samuel Johnson
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The man who is asked by an author what he thinks of his work is put to the torture and is not obliged to speak the truth. -- Samuel Johnson
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Social sorrow loses half its pain. -- Samuel Johnson
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The whole world is put in motion by the wish for riches and the dread of poverty. -- Samuel Johnson
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Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is expected is already destroyed. -- Samuel Johnson
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He who expects much will be often disappointed; yet disappointment seldom cures us of expectation, or has any other effect than that of producing a moral sentence or peevish exclamation. -- Samuel Johnson
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A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice. -- Samuel Johnson
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When any fit of gloominess, or perversion of mind, lays hold upon you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaints. -- Samuel Johnson
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The real satisfaction which praise can afford, is when what is repeated aloud agrees with the whispers of conscience, by showing us that we have not endeavored to deserve well in vain. -- Samuel Johnson
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No man hates him at whom he can laugh. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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Wealth is nothing in itself; it is not useful but when it departs from us. -- Samuel Johnson
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Whisky making is the art of making poison pleasant -- Samuel Johnson
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Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. -- Samuel Johnson
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He who would have fine guests, let him have a fine wife. -- Samuel Johnson
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Fate wings, with every wish, the afflictive dart,
Each gift of nature, and each grace of art. -- Samuel Johnson
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It seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful. -- Samuel Johnson
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Bias and impartiality is in the eye of the beholder. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every man has something to do which he neglects, every man has faults to conquer which he delays to combat. -- Samuel Johnson
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Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion. -- Samuel Johnson
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Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause awhile from letters, to be wise. -- Samuel Johnson
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[A]ngling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything. -- Samuel Johnson
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Cruel with guilt, and daring with despair, the midnight murderer bursts the faithless bar; invades the sacred hour of silent rest and leaves, unseen, a dagger in your breast. -- Samuel Johnson
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Sir, there is no end of negative criticism. -- Samuel Johnson
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Misery and shame are nearly allied. -- Samuel Johnson
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A short letter to a distant friend is, in my opinion, an insult like that of a slight bow or cursory salutation - a proof of unwillingness to do much, even where there is a necessity of doing something. -- Samuel Johnson
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None of the projects or designs which exercise the mind of man are equally subject to obstructions and disappointments with the pursuit of fame. -- Samuel Johnson
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Had I learned to fiddle, I should have done nothing else. -- Samuel Johnson
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Parents and children seldom act in concert:
each child endeavors to appropriate
the esteem or fondness of the parents,
and the parents, with yet less temptation,
betray each other to their children. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man of sense and education should meet a suitable companion in a wife. It is a miserable thing when the conversation can only be such as whether the mutton should be boiled or roasted, and probably a dispute about that. -- Samuel Johnson
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Parts are not to be examined till the whole has been surveyed; there is a kind of intellectual remoteness necessary for the comprehension of any great work in its full design and its true proportions; a close approach shews the smaller niceties, but the beauty of the whole is discerned no longer. -- Samuel Johnson
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Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle. -- Samuel Johnson
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He to whom many objects of pursuit arise at the same time, will frequently hesitate between different desires till a rival has precluded him, or change his course as new attractions prevail, and harass himself without advancing. -- Samuel Johnson
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What a strange narrowness of mind now is that, to think the things we have not known are better than the things we have known. -- Samuel Johnson
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Lectures were once useful; but now when all can read, and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary. -- Samuel Johnson
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Our triumphant age of plenty is riddled with darker feelings of doubt, cynicism, distrust, boredom and a strange kind of emptiness -- Samuel Johnson
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Distance either of time or place is sufficient to reconcile weak minds to wonderful relations. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every man has some favorite topic of conversation, on which, by a feigned seriousness of attention, he may be drawn to expatiate without end. -- Samuel Johnson
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A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters. -- Samuel Johnson
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Among the calamities of war may be numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages. -- Samuel Johnson
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As the greatest liar tells more truths than falsehoods, so may it be said of the worst man, that he does more good than evil. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is the fate of those who toil at the lower employments of life, to be rather driven by the fear of evil, than attracted by the prospect of good; -- Samuel Johnson
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The booksellers are generous liberal-minded men. -- Samuel Johnson
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We suffer equal pain from the pertinacious adhesion of unwelcome images, as from the evanescence of those which are pleasing and useful. -- Samuel Johnson
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When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation. -- Samuel Johnson
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Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without any very accurate inquiry whether it is right. -- Samuel Johnson
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Catch, then, oh! catch the transient hour,
Improve each moment as it flies;
Life's a short summer-man a flower;
He dies-alas! how soon he dies! -- Samuel Johnson
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While an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead we rate them by his best. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man had rather have a hundred lies told of him than one truth which he does not wish should be told. -- Samuel Johnson
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Never mind the use
do it! -- Samuel Johnson
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Rash oaths, whether kept or broken, frequently produce guilt. -- Samuel Johnson
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No writer can be fully convicted of imitation except there is a concurrence of more resemblance than can be imagined to have happened by chance; as where the same ideas are conjoined without any natural series or necessary coherence, or where not only the thought but the words are copied. -- Samuel Johnson
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We consider ourselves as defective in memory, either because we remember less than we desire, or less than we suppose others to remember. -- Samuel Johnson
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The future is purchased by the present. -- Samuel Johnson
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The Roman tyrant was content to be hated, if he was but feared; and there are thousands of the readers of romances willing to be thought wicked, if they may be allowed to be wits. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nobody can be taught faster than he can learn. -- Samuel Johnson
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In such a government as ours no man is appointed to an office because he is the fittest for it
nor hardly in any other government
because there are so many connections and dependencies to be studied. -- Samuel Johnson
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Men have solicitude about fame; and the greater share they have of it, the more afraid they are of losing it. -- Samuel Johnson
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Go into the street, and give one man a lecture on morality, and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most. -- Samuel Johnson
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Idleness and timidity often despair without being overcome, and forbear attempts for fear of being defeated; and we may promote the invigoration of faint endeavors, by showing what has already been performed. -- Samuel Johnson
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No mind is much employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments. -- Samuel Johnson
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All envy would be extinguished, if it were universally known that there are none to be envied. -- Samuel Johnson
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The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning. -- Samuel Johnson
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The vicious count their years; virtuous, their acts. -- Samuel Johnson
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We are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure. -- Samuel Johnson
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There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that applauds him who does not deserve praise, is endeavoring to deceive the public; he that hisses in malice or sport, is an oppressor and a robber. -- Samuel Johnson
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The peculiar doctrine of Christianity is that of a universal sacrifice and perpetual propitiation. -- Samuel Johnson
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Peevishness may be considered the canker of life, that destroys its vigor and checks its improvement; that creeps on with hourly depredations, and taints and vitiates what it cannot consume. -- Samuel Johnson
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Sir, there is nothing too little for so little creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great knowledge of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible. 16, July 1763. -- Samuel Johnson
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He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man. -- Samuel Johnson
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The fiction of happiness is propagated by every tongue and confirmed by every look till at last all profess the joy which they do not feel and consent to yield to the general delusion. -- Samuel Johnson
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The coquette has companions, indeed, but no lovers,
for love is respectful and timorous; and where among her followers will she find a husband? -- Samuel Johnson
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What is good only because it pleases cannot be pronounced good till it has been found to please. -- Samuel Johnson
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I never take a nap after dinner
but when I have had a bad night,
and then the nap takes me. -- Samuel Johnson
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In all political regulations, good cannot be complete, it can only be predominant. -- Samuel Johnson
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Few things are so liberally bestowed, or squandered with so little effect, as good advice. -- Samuel Johnson
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Almost all the moral good which is left among us is the apparent effect of physical evil. -- Samuel Johnson
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Men are like stone jugs - you may lug them where you like by the ears. -- Samuel Johnson
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The violence of war admits no distinction; the lance, that is lifted at guilt and power, will sometimes fall on innocence and gentleness. -- Samuel Johnson
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Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye. -- Samuel Johnson
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From all our observations we may collect with certainty, that misery is the lot of man, but cannot discover in what particular condition it will find most alleviations. -- Samuel Johnson
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When people find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer their inferior while he is with them, it must be highly gratifying to them. -- Samuel Johnson
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We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable. -- Samuel Johnson
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Many useful and valuable books lie buried in shops and libraries, unknown and unexamined, unless some lucky compiler opens them by chance, and finds an easy spoil of wit and learning. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last. -- Samuel Johnson
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We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself. -- Samuel Johnson
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And panting Time toil'd after him in vain. -- Samuel Johnson
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Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it. -- Samuel Johnson
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From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life. -- Samuel Johnson
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A voyage to the moon, however romantick and absurd the scheme may now appear, since the properties of air have been better understood, seemed highly probable to many of the aspiring wits in the last century -- Samuel Johnson
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Preserve me from unseasonable and immoderate sleep. -- Samuel Johnson
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Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all. -- Samuel Johnson
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Lawful and settled authority is very seldom resisted when it is well employed. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek. -- Samuel Johnson
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Was ever poet so trusted before? -- Samuel Johnson
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It seems to be remarkable that death increases our veneration for the good, and extenuates our hatred for the bad. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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Like an image in a dream the world is troubled by love, hatred, and other poisons. So long as the dream lasts, the image appears to be real; but on awaking it vanishes. -- Samuel Johnson
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If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written. -- Samuel Johnson
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To buried merit rise the tardy bust. -- Samuel Johnson
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Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good. -- Samuel Johnson
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All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare. -- Samuel Johnson
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Exert your talents, and distinguish yourself, and don't think of retiring from the world, until the world will be sorry that you retire. -- Samuel Johnson
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I would rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world. -- Samuel Johnson
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Pleasure itself is not a vice -- Samuel Johnson
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Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world. -- Samuel Johnson
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Quotation is a good thing, there is a community of thought in it. -- Samuel Johnson
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No man can perform so little as not to have reason to congratulate himself on his merits, when he beholds the multitude that live in total idleness, and have never yet endeavoured to be useful. -- Samuel Johnson
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A blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another. -- Samuel Johnson
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Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without any tears. -- Samuel Johnson
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Virtue is uncommon in all the classes of humanity; and I suppose it will scarcely be imagined more frequent in a prison than in other places. Yet ... -- Samuel Johnson
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The mathematicians are well acquainted with the difference between pure science, which has only to do with ideas, and the application of its laws to the use of life, in which they are constrained to submit to the imperfections of matter and the influence of accidents. -- Samuel Johnson
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But let not little men triumph upon knowing that Johnson was an HYPOCHONDRIACK, was subject to what the learned, philosophical, and pious Dr. Cheyne has so well treated under the title of 'The English Malady. -- Samuel Johnson
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Resentment gratifies him who intended an injury, and pains him unjustly who did not intend it. -- Samuel Johnson
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Sorrow is the mere rust of the soul. Activity will cleanse and brighten it. -- Samuel Johnson
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Advice is seldom welcome. Those who need it most, like it least. -- Samuel Johnson
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Expectation improperly indulged in must end in disappointment. -- Samuel Johnson
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Frequent discontent must proceed from frequent hardships. -- Samuel Johnson
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Deceit and falsehood, whatever conveniences they may for a time promise or produce, are, in the sum of life, obstacles to happiness. Those who profit by the cheat distrust the deceiver; and the act by which kindness was sought puts an end to confidence. -- Samuel Johnson
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In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath. -- Samuel Johnson
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Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult. -- Samuel Johnson
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A second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience. -- Samuel Johnson
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Beauty, without kindness, dies unenjoyed and undelighting. -- Samuel Johnson
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Once a man is tired of London, he is tired of life. -- Samuel Johnson
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As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy. -- Samuel Johnson
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Such seems to be the disposition of man, that whatever makes a distinction produces rivalry. -- Samuel Johnson
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Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding can expect only to improve a single science. -- Samuel Johnson
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Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression; we must always purpose to do more or better than in time past. -- Samuel Johnson
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No man likes to live under the eye of perpetual disapprobation. -- Samuel Johnson
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Diffidence may check resolution and obstruct performance, but compensates its embarrassments by more important advantages; it conciliates the proud, and softens the severe; averts envy from excellence, and censure from miscarriage. -- Samuel Johnson
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The roads of science are narrow, so that they who travel them, must wither follow or meet one another ... -- Samuel Johnson
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To talk in public, to think in solitude, to read and to hear, to inquire and answer inquiries, is the business of the scholar -- Samuel Johnson
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Their origin is commonly unknown; for the practice often continues when the cause has ceased, and concerning superstitious ceremonies it is in vain to conjecture; for what reason did not dictate, reason cannot explain. -- Samuel Johnson
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Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such,
We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much;
Who, born for the Universe, narrowed his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man should be careful never to tell tales of himself to his own disadvantage. People may be amused at the time, but they will be remembered, and brought out against him upon some subsequent occasion. -- Samuel Johnson
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What is twice read is commonly better remembered that what is transcribed. -- Samuel Johnson
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Abuse is often of service. There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence. -- Samuel Johnson
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A continual feast of commendation is only to be obtained by merit or by wealth: many are therefore obliged to content themselves with single morsels, and recompense the infrequency of their enjoyment by excess and riot, whenever fortune sets the banquet before them. -- Samuel Johnson
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I have already enjoyed too much; give me something to desire. -- Samuel Johnson
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Come, let me know what it is that makes a Scotch man happy! -- Samuel Johnson
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Most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment. -- Samuel Johnson
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To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege; to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is the care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest. They support themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for to-morrow. -- Samuel Johnson
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Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives. -- Samuel Johnson
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Hope is itself a species of happiness, and perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords. -- Samuel Johnson
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Such is the emptiness of human enjoyment that we are always impatient of the present. Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust. -- Samuel Johnson
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Our senses, our appetite, and our passions are our lawful and faithful guides in things that relate solely to this life. -- Samuel Johnson
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The business of the poet, said Imlac, is to examine, not the individual, but the species. -- Samuel Johnson
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In bed we laugh, in bed we cry, and born in bed, in bed we die; the near approach a bed may show of human bliss to human woe. -- Samuel Johnson
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The poor and the busy have no leisure for sentimental sorrow. -- Samuel Johnson
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Languages are the pedigree of nations. -- Samuel Johnson
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Pendantry is the unseasonable ostentation of learning. It may be discovered either in the choice of a subject or in the manner d treating it. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that hopes to look back hereafter with satisfaction upon past years must learn to know the present value of single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle of time fall useless to the ground. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, roll darkly down the torrent of his fate. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is unpleasing to represent our affairs to our own disadvantage; yet it is necessary to shew the evils which we desire to be removed. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is very common for us to desire most what we are least qualified to obtain. -- Samuel Johnson
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Reason by degrees submits to absurdity, as the eye in time is accommodated to darkness. -- Samuel Johnson
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Commerce however we may please ourselves with the contrary opinion, is one of the daughters of fortune, inconstant and deceitful as her mother. She chooses her residence where she is least expected, and shifts her abode when her continuance is, in appearance, most firmly settled. -- Samuel Johnson
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Riches exclude only one inconvenience,
that is, poverty. -- Samuel Johnson
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Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse. -- Samuel Johnson
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No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had -- Samuel Johnson
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No man can fall into contempt but those who deserve it. -- Samuel Johnson
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A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it. -- Samuel Johnson
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Wasting a fortune is evaporation by a thousand imperceptible means. -- Samuel Johnson
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Bleed, bleed, poor country!Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure;For goodness dares not check thee!His title is affear'd.Shakesp.Macbeth. -- Samuel Johnson
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In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.
(On the Bravery of the English Common Soldiers) -- Samuel Johnson
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The gloomy and the resentful are always found among those who have nothing to do or who do nothing. -- Samuel Johnson
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We often look with indifference on the successive parts of something that, if the whole were seen together, would shake us with emotion. -- Samuel Johnson
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Philosophy has often attempted to repress insolence by asserting that all conditions are leveled by death; a position which, however it may defect the happy, will seldom afford much comfort to the wretched. -- Samuel Johnson
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ANIENTED (A'NIENTED) adj.[anneantir, Fr.]Frustrated; brought to nothing. -- Samuel Johnson
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To bring back riches from the East you must bring riches with you. -- Samuel Johnson
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Diligence in employments of less consequence is the most successful introduction to greater enterprises. -- Samuel Johnson
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I have no more pleasure in hearing a man attempting wit and failing, than in seeing a man trying to leap over a ditch and tumbling into it -- Samuel Johnson
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He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every man, who proposes to grow eminent by learning, should carry in his mind, at once, the difficulty of excellence, and the force of industry; and remember that fame is not conferred but as the recompense of labour, and that labour, vigorously continued, has not often failed of its reward. -- Samuel Johnson
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Men have been wise in many different modes; but they have always laughed the same way. -- Samuel Johnson
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Jesting, often, only proves a want of intellect. -- Samuel Johnson
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Pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself -- Samuel Johnson
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It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination. -- Samuel Johnson
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If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it to go to the beginning. He may perhaps not feel again the inclination. -- Samuel Johnson
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If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle. -- Samuel Johnson
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Those who have any intention of deviating from the beaten roads of life, and acquiring a reputation superior to names hourly swept away by time among the refuse of fame, should add to their reason and their spirit the power of persisting in their pur -- Samuel Johnson
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Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage,
Till pitying Nature signs the last release,
And bids afflicted worth retire to peace. -- Samuel Johnson
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When a Man is tried of London, he is tired of life. -- Samuel Johnson
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Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale. -- Samuel Johnson
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Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement. -- Samuel Johnson
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Merit rather enforces respect than attracts fondness. -- Samuel Johnson
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No one is much pleased with a companion who does not increase, in some respect, their fondness for themselves. -- Samuel Johnson
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The faults of a man loved or honoured sometimes steal secretly and imperceptibly upon the wise and virtuous, but by injudicious fondness or thoughtless vanity are adopted with design. -- Samuel Johnson
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There are charms made only for distant admiration. -- Samuel Johnson
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The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove. -- Samuel Johnson
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The truly strong and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place. -- Samuel Johnson
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Life is surely given us for higher purposes than to gather what our ancestors have wisely thrown away, and to learn what is of no value but because it has been forgotten. -- Samuel Johnson
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Let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known. -- Samuel Johnson
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The necessities of our condition require a thousand offices of tenderness, which mere regard for the species will never dictate. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that never thinks can never be wise. -- Samuel Johnson
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Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. -- Samuel Johnson
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There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man is not obliged honestly to answer a question which should not properly be put. -- Samuel Johnson
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Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotsman to draw the trigger at his death. -- Samuel Johnson
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Cowardice encroaches fast upon such as spend their lives in company of persons higher than themselves. -- Samuel Johnson
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The fortitude which has encountered no dangers, that prudence which has surmounted no difficulties, that integrity which has been attacked by no temptation, can at best be considered but as gold not yet brought to the test, of which therefore the true value cannot be assigned. -- Samuel Johnson
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AGALAXY (A'GALAXY) n.s.[Gr.] Want of milk.Dict. -- Samuel Johnson
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To excite opposition and inflame malevolence is the unhappy privilege of courage made arrogant by consciousness of strength. -- Samuel Johnson
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Life is short. The sooner that a man begins to enjoy his wealth the better. -- Samuel Johnson
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If, sir, men were all virtuous, I should with great alacrity teach them all to fly. But what would be the security of the good if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing through the clouds neither wall, nor mountains, nor seas could afford any security. -- Samuel Johnson
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Economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty, and of ease, and the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness and health. -- Samuel Johnson
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Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty. -- Samuel Johnson
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Solitude is dangerous to reason, without being favorable to virtue. Remember that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad. -- Samuel Johnson
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Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment. -- Samuel Johnson
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Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free. -- Samuel Johnson
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True enjoyments also keep people from vice. -- Samuel Johnson
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Power is not sufficient evidence of truth. -- Samuel Johnson
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Babies do not want to hear about babies; they like to be told of giants and castles. -- Samuel Johnson
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The true art of memory, is the art of attention -- Samuel Johnson
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Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every desire is a viper in the bosom, who while he was chill was harmless; but when warmth gave him strength, exerted it in poison. -- Samuel Johnson
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What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more. -- Samuel Johnson
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Those who attain to any excellence commonly spend life in some single pursuit, for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms. -- Samuel Johnson
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The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good. -- Samuel Johnson
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The friendship which is to be practised or expected by common mortals, must take its rise from mutual pleasure, and must end when the power ceases of delighting each other. -- Samuel Johnson
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No member of society has the right to teach any doctrine contrary to what society holds to be true. -- Samuel Johnson
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The liberty of the press is a blessing when we are inclined to write against others, and a calamity when we find ourselves overborne by the multitude of our assailants. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is indeed not easy to distinguish affectation from habit; he that has once studiously developed a style, rarely writes afterwards with complete ease. -- Samuel Johnson
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All this [wealth] excludes but one evil, poverty. -- Samuel Johnson
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You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money to those who work, as the recompense of their labor, than when you give money merely in charity. -- Samuel Johnson
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By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show. -- Samuel Johnson
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Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible. [on hearing a famous violinist] -- Samuel Johnson
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Advice is offensive, it shows us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nobody has the right to put another under such a difficulty that he must either hurt the person by telling the truth or hurt himself by telling what is not true. -- Samuel Johnson
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Network: Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections [ ... ]
Reticulated: Made of network; formed with interstitial vacuities. -- Samuel Johnson
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To fix the thoughts by writing, and subject them to frequent examinations and reviews, is the best method of enabling the mind to detect its own sophisms, and keep it on guard against the fallacies which it practices on others -- Samuel Johnson
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For gold the hireling judge distorts the laws. -- Samuel Johnson
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The relief of enemies has a tendency to unite mankind in fraternal affection. -- Samuel Johnson
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Whatever is proposed, it is much easier to find reasons for rejecting than embracing. -- Samuel Johnson
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Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship. -- Samuel Johnson
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Celestial wisdom calms the mind. -- Samuel Johnson
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My diseases are an asthma and a dropsy and, what is less curable, seventy-five. -- Samuel Johnson
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The belief of immortality is impressed upon all men, and all men act under an impression of it, however they may talk, and though, perhaps, they may be scarcely sensible of it. -- Samuel Johnson
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Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance. Those that walk with vigor, three hours a day, will pass in seven years a space equal to the circumference of the globe. -- Samuel Johnson
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The process is the reality. -- Samuel Johnson
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Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark. -- Samuel Johnson
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A writer who obtains his full purpose loses himself in his own lustre. -- Samuel Johnson
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His virtues walked their narrow round,
Nor made a pause, nor left a void;
And sure the Eternal Master found
The single talent well employed. -- Samuel Johnson
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All intellectual improvement arises from leisure. -- Samuel Johnson
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Gloomy calm of idle vacancy. -- Samuel Johnson
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ANIMOSITY (ANIMO'SITY) n.s.[animositas, Lat.]Vehemence of hatred; passionate malignity. It implies rather the disposition to break out into outrages, than the outrage itself. They were sure to bring passion, -- Samuel Johnson
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It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest. -- Samuel Johnson
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Assertion is not argument; to contradict the statement of an opponent is not proof that you are correct. -- Samuel Johnson
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The love of retirement has in all ages adhered closely to those minds which have been most enlarged by knowledge, or elevated by genius. Those who enjoyed everything generally supposed to confer happiness have been forced to seek it in the shades of privacy. -- Samuel Johnson
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Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients. -- Samuel Johnson
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Admiration must be continued by that novelty which first produces it; and how much soever is given, there must always be reason to imagine that more remains. -- Samuel Johnson
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The finest landscape in the world is improved by a good inn in the foreground. -- Samuel Johnson
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Employment and hardships prevent melancholy. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nature never gives everything at once. -- Samuel Johnson
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No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance. -- Samuel Johnson
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To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed. -- Samuel Johnson
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ANACAMPTICK (ANACA'MPTICK) adj.[ or reflected: an anacamptick sound, an echo; an anacamptick hill, a hill that produces an echo. -- Samuel Johnson
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The general remedy of those who are uneasy without knowing the cause is change of place. -- Samuel Johnson
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The expense is damnable, the position is ridiculous, and the pleasure fleeting. -- Samuel Johnson
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Wine gives a man nothing ... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost. -- Samuel Johnson
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Criticism, though dignified from the earliest ages by the labours of men eminent for knowledge and sagacity, has not yet attained the certainty and stability of science. -- Samuel Johnson
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Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford. -- Samuel Johnson
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I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) -- Samuel Johnson
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A translator is to be like his author; it is not his business to excel him. -- Samuel Johnson
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No evil is insupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong. -- Samuel Johnson
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You raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument. -- Samuel Johnson
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I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little. -- Samuel Johnson
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Towering is the confidence of twenty-one. -- Samuel Johnson
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The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket; a very few names may be considered as perpetual lamps that shine unconsumed. -- Samuel Johnson
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The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking. -- Samuel Johnson
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He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts. -- Samuel Johnson
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Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners. -- Samuel Johnson
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Of all the grief's that harass the distressed; sure the most bitter is a scornful jest. -- Samuel Johnson
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Words become low by the occasions to which they are applied, or the general character of them who use them; and the disgust which they produce arises from the revival of those images with which they are commonly united. -- Samuel Johnson
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All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance. -- Samuel Johnson
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Human happiness has always its abatements; the brightest sunshine of success is not without a cloud. -- Samuel Johnson
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Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, I did not give it to the man, but to humanity. -- Samuel Johnson
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Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing. -- Samuel Johnson
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Poverty has, in large cities, very different appearances; it is often concealed in splendour, and often in extravagance. -- Samuel Johnson
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Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness. -- Samuel Johnson
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You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company. -- Samuel Johnson
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I wish there were some cure, like the lover's leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession. -- Samuel Johnson
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Happiness is enjoyed only in proportion as it is known; and such is the state or folly of man, that it is known only by experience of its contrary. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that has too much to do will do something wrong. -- Samuel Johnson
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The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing. -- Samuel Johnson
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Get together a hundred or two men, however sensible they may be, and you are very likely to have a mob. -- Samuel Johnson
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Our supple tribes repress their patriot throats, And ask no questions but the price of votes. -- Samuel Johnson
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Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking. -- Samuel Johnson
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The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principle subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied. -- Samuel Johnson
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If one was to think constantly of death, the business of life would stand still. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man, doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote enquiries. -- Samuel Johnson
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No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned ... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company. -- Samuel Johnson
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People seldom read a book which is given to them; and few are given. The way to spread a work is to sell it at a low price. No man will send to buy a thing that costs even sixpence without an intention to read it. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every man's affairs, however little, are important to himself. -- Samuel Johnson
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Credulity is the common failing of inexperienced virtue; and he who is spontaneously suspicious may justly be charged with radical corruption. -- Samuel Johnson
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The whole of life is but keeping away the thoughts of death. -- Samuel Johnson
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The equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments. -- Samuel Johnson
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Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other. -- Samuel Johnson
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Since life itself is uncertain, nothing which has life for its basis can boast much stability. -- Samuel Johnson
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Other things may be seized by might, or purchased with money, but knowledge is to be gained only by study, and study to be prosecuted only in retirement. -- Samuel Johnson
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The mind is seldom quickened to very vigorous operations but by pain, or the dread of pain. We do not disturb ourselves with the detection of fallacies which do us no harm. -- Samuel Johnson
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Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is no book so poor that it would not be a prodigy if wholly made by a single man. -- Samuel Johnson
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Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon; of loud noise, but little danger. -- Samuel Johnson
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Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every government is perpetually degenerating towards corruption, from which it must be rescued at certain periods by the resuscitation of its first principles, and the re-establishment of its original constitution. -- Samuel Johnson
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Apologies are seldom of any use. -- Samuel Johnson
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The great source of pleasure is variety. -- Samuel Johnson
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He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great. -- Samuel Johnson
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I inherited a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober. -- Samuel Johnson
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A lexicographer, a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice. -- Samuel Johnson
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The luster of diamonds is invigorated by the interposition of darker bodies; the lights of a picture are created by the shades; the highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is that of rest after fatigue. -- Samuel Johnson
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There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex. -- Samuel Johnson
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Indolence is the devil's cushion. -- Samuel Johnson
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People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed. -- Samuel Johnson
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A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, And touched nothing that he did not adorn. -- Samuel Johnson
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He left the name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale. -- Samuel Johnson
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I have long known that splendour of reputation is not to be counted among the necessaries of life, and therefore shall not much repine if praise be withheld till it is better deserved. -- Samuel Johnson
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The eye of the mind, like that of the body, can only extend its view to new objects, by losing sight of those which are now before it. -- Samuel Johnson
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Men hate more steadily than they love. -- Samuel Johnson
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Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again. -- Samuel Johnson
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No man sympathizes with the sorrows of vanity. -- Samuel Johnson
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To a people warlike and indigent, an incursion into a rich country is never hurtful. -- Samuel Johnson
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Probably no one will ever know whether it is better to wear a nightcap or not. -- Samuel Johnson
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The best part of every author is in general to be found in his book, I assure you. -- Samuel Johnson
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When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, Distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly. -- Samuel Johnson
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Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see. -- Samuel Johnson
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In all evils which admits a remedy, impatience should be avoided, because it wastes the time and attention in complaints which, if properly applied, might remove the cause. -- Samuel Johnson
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As the faculty of writing has chiefly been a masculine endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has always been thrown upon the women. -- Samuel Johnson
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The majority have no other reason for their opinions than that they are the fashion. -- Samuel Johnson
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The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken. -- Samuel Johnson
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I do not envy a clergyman's life as an easy life, nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life. -- Samuel Johnson
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Cautious age suspects the flattering form, and only credits what experience tells. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that teaches us anything which we knew not before is undoubtedly to be reverenced as a master. -- Samuel Johnson
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No man was ever great by imitation. -- Samuel Johnson
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No one ever became great by imitation. -- Samuel Johnson
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A common observation, that few are mended by imprisonment, and that he, whose crimes have made confinement necessary, seldom makes any other use of his enlargement, than to do, with greater cunning, what he did before with less. -- Samuel Johnson
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Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may be properly charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it. -- Samuel Johnson
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I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence. -- Samuel Johnson
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Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth. -- Samuel Johnson
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I have always said the first Whig was the Devil. -- Samuel Johnson
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A secret in his mouth, is like a wild bird put into a cage; whose door no sooner opens, but 'tis out. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim; and when you are calculating, calculate. -- Samuel Johnson
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A patriot is he whose public conduct is regulated by one single motive, the love of his country; who, as an agent in parliament, has, for himself, neither hope nor fear, neither kindness nor resentment, but refers every thing to the common interest -- Samuel Johnson
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To have gold is to be in fear, and to want it to be sorrow. -- Samuel Johnson
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As any action or posture, long continued, will distort and disfigure the limbs, so the mind likewise is crippled and contracted by perpetual application to the same set of ideas. -- Samuel Johnson
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Philosophers there are who try to make themselves believe that this life is happy; but they believe it only while they are saying it, and never yet produced conviction in a single mind. -- Samuel Johnson
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Avarice is always poor. -- Samuel Johnson
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The Irish are a fair people: They never speak well of one another. -- Samuel Johnson
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In the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence. -- Samuel Johnson
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All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us. -- Samuel Johnson
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Timidity is a disease of the mind, obstinate and fatal; for a man once persuaded that any impediment is insuperable has given it, with respect to himself, that strength and weight which it had not before. -- Samuel Johnson
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The mischief of flattery is, not that it persuades any man that he is what he is not, but that it suppresses the influence of honest ambition, by raising an opinion that honour may be gained without the toil of merit. -- Samuel Johnson
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The present time is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation. -- Samuel Johnson
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In proportion as our cares are employed upon the future, they are abstracted from the present, from the only time which we can call our own, and of which, if we neglect the apparent duties to make provision against visionary attacks, we shall certainly counteract our own purpose. -- Samuel Johnson
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With what hope can we endeavor to persuade the ladies that the time spent at the toilet is lost in vanity. -- Samuel Johnson
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Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home. -- Samuel Johnson
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Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself. -- Samuel Johnson
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We seldom learn the true want of what we have till it is discovered that we can have no more. -- Samuel Johnson
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What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company. -- Samuel Johnson
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Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return. -- Samuel Johnson
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To be free it is not enough to beat the system, one must beat the system every day -- Samuel Johnson
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In sovereignty there are no gradations. -- Samuel Johnson
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The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it. -- Samuel Johnson
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The natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety. -- Samuel Johnson
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All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance. -- Samuel Johnson
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Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind. -- Samuel Johnson
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Pointed axioms and acute replies fly loose about the world, and are assigned successively to those whom it may be the fashion to celebrate. -- Samuel Johnson
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ACOUSTICKS (ACO'USTICKS) n.s.[Gr. to hear.]1. The doctrine or theory of sounds.2. Medicines to help the hearing.Quincy. -- Samuel Johnson
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No knowledge is useless, with the exception of heraldry. -- Samuel Johnson
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He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything. -- Samuel Johnson
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A certain amount of distrust is wholesome, but not so much of others as of ourselves; neither vanity not conceit can exist in the same atmosphere with it. -- Samuel Johnson
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One of the aged greatest miseries is that they cannot easily find a companion able to share the memories of the past. -- Samuel Johnson
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We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that thinks he can afford to be negligent is not far from being poor. -- Samuel Johnson
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O write and to live are very different. Many who praise virtue, do no more than praise it. -- Samuel Johnson
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In all pleasures hope is a considerable part. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is the just doom of laziness and gluttony to be inactive without ease and drowsy without tranquility. -- Samuel Johnson
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To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nothing is difficult, when gain and honour unite their influence. -- Samuel Johnson
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Too much vigor in the beginning of an undertaking often intercepts and prevents the steadiness and perseverance always necessary in the conduct of a complicated scheme. -- Samuel Johnson
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Inquiries into the heart are not for man. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment. -- Samuel Johnson
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The present is never a happy state to any human being. -- Samuel Johnson
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The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery. -- Samuel Johnson
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The chief glory of every people arises from its authors. -- Samuel Johnson
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He who writes much will not easily escape a manner, such a recurrence of particular modes as may be easily noted. -- Samuel Johnson
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Ignorance, when voluntary, is criminal, and a man may be properly charged with that evil which he neglected or refused to learn how to prevent. -- Samuel Johnson
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If the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up, and claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system. -- Samuel Johnson
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To paint things as they are requires a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy. -- Samuel Johnson
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There are two types of knowledge. One is knowing a thing. The other is knowing where to find it. -- Samuel Johnson
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So scanty is our present allowance of happiness that in many situations life could scarcely be supported if hope were not allowed to relieve the present hour by pleasures borrowed from the future. -- Samuel Johnson
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Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen. -- Samuel Johnson
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The history of mankind is little else than a narrative of designs which have failed and hopes that have been disappointed. -- Samuel Johnson
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I look upon every day to be lost in which I do not make a new acquaintance. -- Samuel Johnson
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Differences, we know, are never so effectually laid asleep as by some common calamity; an enemy unites all to whom he threatens danger. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man who both spends and saves money is the happiest man, because he has both enjoyments. -- Samuel Johnson
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Health is so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every man prefers virtue, when there is not some strong incitement to transgress its precepts. -- Samuel Johnson
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He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty. -- Samuel Johnson
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To correspond to; to suit with. In water face answereth to face: so the heart of man to man.BibleProv.xxvii. 19.7. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that undervalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them. -- Samuel Johnson
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Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is incident to physicians, I am afraid, beyond all other men, to mistake subsequence for consequence. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is more reasonable to wish for reputation while it may be enjoyed, as Anacreon calls upon his companions to give him for present use the wine and garlands which they propose to bestow upon his tomb. -- Samuel Johnson
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Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find? -- Samuel Johnson
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Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do. -- Samuel Johnson
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The business of life summons us away from useless grief, and calls us to the exercise of those virtues of which we are lamenting our deprivation. -- Samuel Johnson
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Glory, the casual gift of thoughtless crowds!
Glory, the bribe of avaricious virtue! -- Samuel Johnson
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A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself. -- Samuel Johnson
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Of all kinds of credulity, the most obstinate is that of party-spirit; of men, who, being numbered, they know not why, in any party, resign the use of their own eyes and ears, and resolve to believe nothing that does not favor those whom they profess to follow. -- Samuel Johnson
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To do something is in every man's power. -- Samuel Johnson
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You can't be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who's for you and who's against you. -- Samuel Johnson
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John Wesley's conversation is good, but he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour. This is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have his talk out as I do. -- Samuel Johnson
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Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see. -- Samuel Johnson
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To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution. -- Samuel Johnson
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Turn on the prudent ant thy heedful eyes. Observe her labors, sluggard, and be wise. -- Samuel Johnson
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Do not discourage your children from hoarding, if they have a taste to it; whoever lays up his penny rather than part with it for a cake, at least is not the slave of gross appetite; and shows besides a preference always to be esteemed, of the future to the present moment. -- Samuel Johnson
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All power of fancy over reason is a degree of madness. -- Samuel Johnson
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I am willing to love all of mankind, except an American. -- Samuel Johnson
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In civilized society we all depend upon each other, and our happiness is very much owing to the good opinion of mankind. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner. -- Samuel Johnson
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Pain and disease awaken us to convictions which are necessary to our moral condition. -- Samuel Johnson
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Depend upon it, sir, it is when you come close to a man in conservation that you discover what his real abilities are; to make a speech in a public assembly is a knack. -- Samuel Johnson
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The size of a man's understanding can be justly measured by his mirth. -- Samuel Johnson
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Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy. -- Samuel Johnson
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We are more pained by ignorance than delighted by instruction. -- Samuel Johnson
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Affectation naturally counterfeits those excellences which are placed at the greatest distance from possibility of attainment, because, knowing our own defects, we eagerly endeavor to supply them with artificial excellence. -- Samuel Johnson
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The worst evils are those that never arrive. -- Samuel Johnson
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How gloomy would be the mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he should never die: that what now acts shall continue its agency, and what now thinks shall think on forever! -- Samuel Johnson
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An exotic and irrational entertainment, which has been always combated, and always has prevailed. -- Samuel Johnson
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What is easy is seldom excellent. -- Samuel Johnson
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Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay an author. -- Samuel Johnson
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There may be other reasons for a man's not speaking in publick than want of resolution: he may have nothing to say. -- Samuel Johnson
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Poetry cannot be translation -- Samuel Johnson
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The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality. -- Samuel Johnson
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Fear naturally quickens the flight of guilt. -- Samuel Johnson
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Keeping accounts, sir, is of no use when a man is spending his own money, and has nobody to whom he is to account. You won't eat less beef today because you have written down what it cost yesterday. -- Samuel Johnson
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All change is of itself an evil, which ought not to be hazarded but for evident advantage; and -- Samuel Johnson
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Better to save a citizen than to kill an enemy. -- Samuel Johnson
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Leave to Heaven the measure and the choice. -- Samuel Johnson
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Riches, perhaps, do not so often produce crimes as incite accusers. -- Samuel Johnson
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He who endeavors to please must appear pleased. -- Samuel Johnson
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What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read. -- Samuel Johnson
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Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life ... the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man who is good enough to go to heaven is not good enough to be a clergyman. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done. -- Samuel Johnson
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Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something acquired ... Do not suffer life to stagnate; it will grow muddy for want of motion: commit yourself again to the current of the world. -- Samuel Johnson
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Of the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain continuance of reason. -- Samuel Johnson
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The labor of rising from the ground will be great, ... but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall. -- Samuel Johnson
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He endearing elegance of female friendship. -- Samuel Johnson
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Hoc age ['do this'] is the great rule, whether you are serious or merry; whether ... learning science or duty from a folio, or floating on the Thames. Intentions must be gathered from acts. -- Samuel Johnson
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Much is due to those who first broke the way to knowledge, and left only to their successors the task of smoothing it. -- Samuel Johnson
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Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy. -- Samuel Johnson
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As any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is common to overlook what is near by keeping the eye fixed on something remote. -- Samuel Johnson
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Labor, if it were not necessary for existence, would be indispensable for the happiness of man. -- Samuel Johnson
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Words are but the signs of ideas. -- Samuel Johnson
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Among many parallels which men of imagination have drawn between the natural and moral state of the world, it has been observed that happiness as well as virtue consists in mediocrity. -- Samuel Johnson
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Whatever is formed for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity. -- Samuel Johnson
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You can never be wise unless you love reading. -- Samuel Johnson
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Women have two weapons - cosmetics and tears -- Samuel Johnson
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There is a certain degree of temptation which will overcome any virtue. Now, in so far as you approach temptation to a man, you do him an injury; and, if he is overcome, you share his guilt. -- Samuel Johnson
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The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity. -- Samuel Johnson
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The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached. -- Samuel Johnson
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New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new. -- Samuel Johnson
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Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled. -- Samuel Johnson
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That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner. -- Samuel Johnson
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We never do anything consciously for the last time without sadness of heart. -- Samuel Johnson
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One cause, which is not always observed, of the insufficiency of riches, is that they very seldom make their owner rich. -- Samuel Johnson
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The majority of a society is the true definition of the public. -- Samuel Johnson
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Age is rarely despised but when it is, contemptible. -- Samuel Johnson
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The duties of religion, sincerely and regularly performed, will always be sufficient to exalt the meanest and to exercise the highest understanding. -- Samuel Johnson
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The civilities of the great are never thrown away. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of. -- Samuel Johnson
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Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess. -- Samuel Johnson
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I do not care to speak ill of a man behind his back, but I believe he is an attorney. -- Samuel Johnson
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A ship is worse than a gaol. There is, in a gaol, better air, better company, better conveniency of every kind; and a ship has the additional disadvantage of of being in danger. -- Samuel Johnson
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The dangers gather as the treasures rise. -- Samuel Johnson
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Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison. -- Samuel Johnson
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Wine gives great pleasure; and every pleasure is of itself a good. It is a good, unless counterbalanced by evil. -- Samuel Johnson
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This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, slow rises worth by poverty depressed. -- Samuel Johnson
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Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything. -- Samuel Johnson
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The mere power of saving what is already in our hands must be of easy acquisition to every mind; and as the example of Lord Bacon may show that the highest intellect cannot safely neglect it, a thousand instances every day prove that the humblest may practise it with success. -- Samuel Johnson
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Thought is always troublesome to him who lives without his own approbation. -- Samuel Johnson
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Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken, themselves to errour. Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull. -- Samuel Johnson
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Most men are more willing to indulge in easy vices than to practise laborious virtues. -- Samuel Johnson
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I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read. -- Samuel Johnson
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The ambition of superior sensibility and superior eloquence disposes the lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and communicate it at another; and each labors first to impose upon himself and then to propagate the imposture. -- Samuel Johnson
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Language is the dress of thought; every time you talk your mind is on parade. -- Samuel Johnson
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There are, indeed, few kinds of composition from which an author, however learned or ingenious, can hope a long continuance of fame. -- Samuel Johnson
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Want of tenderness is want of parts, and is no less a proof of stupidity than depravity. -- Samuel Johnson
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All knowledge is of itself of some value. There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not. -- Samuel Johnson
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Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman. -- Samuel Johnson
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How few of his friends' houses would a man choose to be at when he is sick. -- Samuel Johnson
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That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one. -- Samuel Johnson
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To make dictionaries is dull work. -- Samuel Johnson
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Club: An assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions. -- Samuel Johnson
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Once a coxcomb, always a coxcomb. -- Samuel Johnson
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Curiosity is the thirst of the soul. -- Samuel Johnson
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A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other. -- Samuel Johnson
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As the mind must govern the hands, so in every society the man of intelligence must direct the man of labor. -- Samuel Johnson
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The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay. -- Samuel Johnson
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No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes, than a public library. -- Samuel Johnson
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Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him. -- Samuel Johnson
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I do not know, sir, that the fellow is an infidel; but if he be an infidel, he is an infidel as a dog is an infidel; that is to say, he has never thought upon the subject. -- Samuel Johnson
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Those authors are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence. -- Samuel Johnson
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Whatever professes to benefit by pleasing must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply something sudden and unexpected; that which elevates must always surprise. -- Samuel Johnson
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Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young. -- Samuel Johnson
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When a man feel the reprehension of a friend seconded by his own heart, he is easily heated into resentment. -- Samuel Johnson
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A books should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it. -- Samuel Johnson
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Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured. -- Samuel Johnson
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Shakespeare never has six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven, but this does not refute my general assertion. -- Samuel Johnson
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Good-humor is a state between gayety and unconcern,
the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds; but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel. -- Samuel Johnson
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Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. -- Samuel Johnson
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The most Heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together. -- Samuel Johnson
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Whoever envies another confesses his superiority. -- Samuel Johnson
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In general those parents have the most reverence who most deserve it; for he that lives well cannot be despised. -- Samuel Johnson
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The cankered passion of envy is nothing akin to the silly envy of the ass.L'Estrange,Fab.xxxviii. -- Samuel Johnson
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We must consider how very little history there is
I mean real, authentic history. That certain kings reigned and certain battles were fought, we can depend upon as true; but all the coloring, all the philosophy, of history is conjecture. -- Samuel Johnson
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Time quickly puts an end to artificial and accidental fame -- Samuel Johnson
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The pleasures of sudden wonder are soon exhausted, and the mind can only repose on the stability of truth. -- Samuel Johnson
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Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is not the desire of new acquisitions, but the glory of conquests, that fires the soldier's breast; as indeed the town is seldom worth much, when it has suffered the devastations of a siege. -- Samuel Johnson
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Men who cannot deceive others are very often successful at deceiving themselves. -- Samuel Johnson
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I doubt if there ever was a man who was not gratified by being told that he was liked by the women. -- Samuel Johnson
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Let us be quick to repent of injuries while repentance may not be a barren anguish. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments. -- Samuel Johnson
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Trust as little as you can to report, and examine all you can by your own senses. -- Samuel Johnson
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To do nothing is in everyone's power. -- Samuel Johnson
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The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is little peace or comfort in life if we are always anxious as to future events. He that worries himself with the dread of possible contingencies will never be at rest. -- Samuel Johnson
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No man should attempt to teach others what he has never learned himself -- Samuel Johnson
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A thousand years may elapse before there shall appear another man with a power of versification equal to that of Pope. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is generally agreed, that few men are made better by affluence or exaltation. -- Samuel Johnson
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Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price. -- Samuel Johnson
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The perfect day for quitting is not real. It will never come, so might as well start today -- Samuel Johnson
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Pain is less subject than pleasure to careless expression. -- Samuel Johnson
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Each person's work is always a portrait of himself. -- Samuel Johnson
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Rain is good for vegetables, and for the animals who eat those vegetables, and for the animals who eat those animals. -- Samuel Johnson
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A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose. -- Samuel Johnson
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I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. -- Samuel Johnson
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Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable. -- Samuel Johnson
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Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings. -- Samuel Johnson
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A small country town is not the place in which one would choose to quarrel with a wife; every human being in such places is a spy. -- Samuel Johnson
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Suspicion is very often a useless pain. -- Samuel Johnson
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Curiosity, like all other desires, produces pain as well as pleasure. -- Samuel Johnson
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So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other. -- Samuel Johnson
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We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures -- Samuel Johnson
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Knowledge always desires increase, it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself. -- Samuel Johnson
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Security will produce danger. -- Samuel Johnson
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Guilt once harbored in the conscious breast, intimidates the brave, degrades the great. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected. -- Samuel Johnson
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By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time. -- Samuel Johnson
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We go from anticipation to anticipation, not from satisfaction to satisfaction. -- Samuel Johnson
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Every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from time to come. -- Samuel Johnson
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A newswriter is a man without virtue, who lies at home for his own profit. -- Samuel Johnson
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I look upon it that a man who does not mind his stomach would hardly mind anything else. -- Samuel Johnson
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One of the amusements of idleness is reading without fatigue of close attention; and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read. -- Samuel Johnson
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Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with. -- Samuel Johnson
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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. -- Samuel Johnson
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I will be conquered; I will not capitulate. -- Samuel Johnson
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Oats. A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people. -- Samuel Johnson
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No, Sir, you will have much more influence by giving or lending money where it is wanted, than by hospitality. -- Samuel Johnson
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In discussing these exceptions from the course of nature, the first question is, whether the fact be justly stated. That which is strange is delightful, and a pleasing error is not willingly detected. -- Samuel Johnson
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A cow is a very good animal in the field; but we turn her out of a garden. -- Samuel Johnson
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Flattery pleases very generally. In the first place, the flatterer may think what he says to be true; but, in the second place, whether he thinks so or not, he certainly thinks those whom he flatters of consequence enough to be flattered. -- Samuel Johnson
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I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just. -- Samuel Johnson
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From ignorance our comfort flows, the only wretched are the wise -- Samuel Johnson
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What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure. -- Samuel Johnson
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Hunting was the labour of the savages of North America, but the amusement of the gentlemen of England. -- Samuel Johnson
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Shakespeare never had more than 6 lines together without a fault. -- Samuel Johnson
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I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual. -- Samuel Johnson
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Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze. -- Samuel Johnson
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Resentment is a union of sorrow with malignity; a combination of a passion which all endeavor to avoid with a passion which all concur to detest. -- Samuel Johnson
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Unless a woman has an amorous heart, she is a dull companion. -- Samuel Johnson
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Men do not suspect faults which they do not commit -- Samuel Johnson
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Our minds should not be empty because if they are not preoccupied by good, evil will break in upon them. -- Samuel Johnson
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The insolence of wealth will creep out. -- Samuel Johnson
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As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time; but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law; that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles. -- Samuel Johnson
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Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions -- Samuel Johnson
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ADVENIENT (ADVE'NIENT) adj.[adveniens, Lat.]Advening; coming from outward causes; superadded. -- Samuel Johnson
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The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down. -- Samuel Johnson
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This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive. -- Samuel Johnson
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Hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords; but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage. -- Samuel Johnson
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Patron: One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is repaid in flattery. -- Samuel Johnson
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Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is commonly a weak man who marries for love. -- Samuel Johnson
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A merchant may, perhaps, be a man of an enlarged mind, but there is nothing in trade connected with an enlarged mind. -- Samuel Johnson
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I would advise no man to marry who is not likely to propagate understanding. -- Samuel Johnson
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A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it. -- Samuel Johnson
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The seeds of knowledge may be planted in solitude, but must be cultivated in public. -- Samuel Johnson
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To a poet nothing can be useless. -- Samuel Johnson
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In the motive lies the good or ill. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is no problem the mind of man can set that the mind of man cannot solve. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is no kind of idleness by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business. -- Samuel Johnson
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You despise a man for avarice; but you do not hate him. -- Samuel Johnson
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He that has once concluded it lawful to resist power, when it wants merit, will soon find a want of merit, to justify his resistance to power. -- Samuel Johnson
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The purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside -- Samuel Johnson
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Wit will never make a man rich, but there are places where riches will always make a wit. -- Samuel Johnson
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There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not know it. -- Samuel Johnson
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Language is the work of man, of a being from whom permanence and stability can not be derived. -- Samuel Johnson
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Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat. -- Samuel Johnson
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Why, sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, Sir, is not in Nature. -- Samuel Johnson
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Prosperity is too apt to prevent us from examining our conduct; but adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us. -- Samuel Johnson
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The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities. -- Samuel Johnson
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None can be pleased without praise, and few can be praised without falsehood. -- Samuel Johnson
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Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is. -- Samuel Johnson
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Being in a ship is like being in jail, with the chance of being drowned. -- Samuel Johnson
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Where there is no difficulty there is no praise. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the chastity of a wife. -- Samuel Johnson
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What we hope ever to do with ease, we must first learn to do with diligence. -- Samuel Johnson
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If we estimate dignity by immediate usefulness, agriculture is undoubtedly the first and noblest science. -- Samuel Johnson
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There must always be some advantage on one side or the other, and it is better that advantage should be had by talents than by chance. -- Samuel Johnson
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The drama's laws the drama's patrons give.
For we that live to please must please to live. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little. -- Samuel Johnson
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There are in every age new errors to be rectified and new prejudices to be opposed. -- Samuel Johnson
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To read, write, and converse in due proportions, is, therefore, the business of a man of letters. -- Samuel Johnson
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Exercise is labor without weariness. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is necessary to hope ... for hope itself is happiness. -- Samuel Johnson
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This world, where much is to be done and little to be known. -- Samuel Johnson
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He who would govern his actions by the laws of virtue must regulate his thoughts by those of reason. -- Samuel Johnson
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There are occasions on which all apologies are rudeness. -- Samuel Johnson
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He who attempts to do all will waste his life in doing little. -- Samuel Johnson
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No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures. -- Samuel Johnson
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Much mischief is done in the world with very little interest or design. -- Samuel Johnson
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What is read twice is usually remembered more than what is once written. -- Samuel Johnson
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It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them. -- Samuel Johnson
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Language is the dress of thought. -- Samuel Johnson
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If a man is in doubt whether it would be better for him to expose himself to martyrdom or not, he should not do it. He must be convinced that he has a delegation from heaven. -- Samuel Johnson
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We seldom require more to the happiness of the present hour than to surpass him that stands next before us. -- Samuel Johnson
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Nothing can be truly great which is not right. -- Samuel Johnson
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Disease generally begins that equality which death completes. -- Samuel Johnson
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I never have sought the world;
the world was not to seek me. -- Samuel Johnson
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Judgment is forced upon us by experience -- Samuel Johnson
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Love is only one of many passions. -- Samuel Johnson
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A married man has many cares, but a bachelor no pleasures. -- Samuel Johnson
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A soldier's time is passed in distress and danger, or in idleness and corruption. -- Samuel Johnson
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Grief is a species of idleness. -- Samuel Johnson
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Truth, such as is necessary to the reputation of life, is always found where it is honestly sought. -- Samuel Johnson
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People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to amuse them. -- Samuel Johnson
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Riches seldom make their owners rich. -- Samuel Johnson