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Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
Teacher
Translator
Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Choices
Make
Blessings
Content
Blessing
Choice

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Idleness is often covered by turbulence and hurry. He that neglects his known duty and real employment naturally endeavours to crowd his mind with something that may bar out the remembrance of his own folly, and does any thing but what he ought to do with eager diligence, that he may keep himself in his own favour.
Samuel Johnson
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No one ever became great by imitation.
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Wise married women don't trouble themselves about infidelity in their husbands.
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It is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the chastity of a wife.
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There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow.
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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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Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.
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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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Nothing has tended more to retard the advancement of science than the disposition in vulgar minds to vilify what they cannot comprehend.
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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.
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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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Our senses, our appetite, and our passions are our lawful and faithful guides in things that relate solely to this life.
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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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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 true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
Samuel Johnson
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To wipe all tears from off all faces is a task too hard for mortals but to alleviate misfortunes is often within the most limited power: yet the opportunities which every day affords of relieving the most wretched of human beings are overlooked and neglected with equal disregard of policy and goodness.
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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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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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An author places himself uncalled before the tribunal of criticism and solicits fame at the hazard of disgrace.
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...it will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor.
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