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Samuel Johnson Quotes
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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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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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I have already enjoyed too much; give me something to desire.
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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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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There is reason to suspect, that the distinctions of mankind have more show than value, when it is found that all agree to be weary alike of pleasures and of cares; that the powerful and the weak, the celebrated and obscure, join in one common wish, and implore from nature's hand the nectar of oblivion.
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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I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.
Samuel Johnson
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Example is always more efficacious than precept.
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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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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They teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.
Of the Letters of Lord Chesterfield
Samuel Johnson
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Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies.
Samuel Johnson
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Claret is the liquor for boys; port, for men; but he who aspires to be a hero (smiling) must drink brandy.
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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NETWORK — Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.
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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Long-expected one-and-twenty,
Ling'ring year, at length is flown;
Pride and pleasure, pomp and plenty,
Great [Sir John], are now your own.
Samuel Johnson
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Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels, but they live like men.
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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Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.
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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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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I'll come no more behind your scenes, David [Garrick]; for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities.
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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Quote of the day
Now if the harvest is over, And the world cold, Give me the bonus of laughter, As I lose hold.
John Betjeman
Samuel Johnson
Creative Commons
Born:
September 18, 1709
Died:
December 13, 1784
(aged 75)
Bio:
Samuel Johnson, often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer.
Known for:
The works of Samuel Johnson (1710)
A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759)
Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779)
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