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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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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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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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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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I would injure no man, and should provoke no resentment. I would relieve every distress, and should enjoy the benedictions of gratitude. I would choose my friends among the wise and my wife among the virtuous, and therefore should be in no danger from treachery or unkindness. My children should by my care be learned and pious, and would repay to my age what their childhood had received.
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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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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It is, however, not necessary, that a man should forbear to write, till he has discovered some truth unknown before; he may be sufficiently useful, by only diversifying the surface of knowledge, and luring the mind by a new appearance to a second view of those beauties which it had passed over inattentively before.
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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It is generally allowed, that no man ever found the happiness of possession proportionate to that expectation which incited his desire, and invigorated his pursuit; nor has any man found the evils of life so formidable in reality, as they were described to him by his own imagination; every species of distress brings with it some peculiar supports, some unforeseen means of resisting, or powers of enduring.
Samuel Johnson
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There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth. It is apparent that men can be social beings no longer than they believe each other. When speech is employed only as the vehicle of falsehood, every man must disunite himself from others, inhabit his own cave and seek prey only for himself.
Samuel Johnson
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Many a man is mad in certain instances, and goes through life without having it perceived. For example, a madness has seized a person of supposing himself obliged literally to pray continually; had the madness turned the opposite way, and the person thought it a crime ever to pray, it might not improbably have continued unobserved.
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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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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To read, write, and converse in due proportions, is, therefore, the business of a man of letters.
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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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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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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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 man who feels himself ignorant should, at least, be modest.
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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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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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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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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Such seems to be the disposition of man, that whatever makes a distinction produces rivalry.
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)
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