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More about Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson -
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237 Sourced Quotes
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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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The man who feels himself ignorant should, at least, be modest.
Samuel Johnson
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Of Oliver Goldsmith:
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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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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Man's chief merit consists in resisting the impulses of his nature.
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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Every man prefers virtue, when there is not some strong incitement to transgress its precepts.
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; and, whatever apparent disadvantages he may suffer in the comparison with others, he has some invisible distinctions, some latent reserve of excellence, which he throws into the balance, and by which he generally fancies that it is turned in his favour.
Samuel Johnson
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No man likes to live under the eye of perpetual disapprobation.
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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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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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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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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It very seldom happens to a man that his business is his pleasure.
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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To exact of every man who writes that he should say something new, would be to reduce authors to a small number; to oblige the most fertile genius to say only what is new, would be to contract his volumes to a few pages. Yet, surely, there ought to be some bounds to repetition; libraries ought no more to be heaped for ever with the same thoughts differently expressed, than with the same books differently decorated.
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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Every man speaks and writes with intent to be understood; and it can seldom happen but he that understands himself might convey his notions to another, if, content to be understood, he did not seek to be admired.
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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Waste cannot be accurately told, though we are sensible how destructive it is. Economy, on the one hand, by which a certain income is made to maintain a man genteelly; and waste, on the other, by which on the same income another man lives shabbily, cannot be defined. It is a very nice thing; as one man wears his coat out much sooner than another, we cannot tell how.
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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It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage.
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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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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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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Quote of the day
Joy is like restless day; but peace divine Like quiet night; Lead me, O Lord, — till perfect Day shall shine Through Peace to Light.
Adelaide Anne Procter
Samuel Johnson
Creative Commons
Born:
September 18, 1709
Died:
December 13, 1784
(aged 75)
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