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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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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Things
Despair
Performed
Skills
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Works
Persistence
Motivational
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Impossible
Perseverance
Diligence
Great
Fixed
Willpower
Work
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How few of his friends' houses would a man choose to be at when he is sick.
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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.
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Every other author may aspire to praise the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.
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Women have two weapons - cosmetics and tears
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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
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That eminence of learning is not to be gained without labour, at least equal to that which any other kind of greatness can require, will be allowed by those who wish to elevate the character of a scholar since they cannot but know that every human acquisition is valuable in proportion to the difficulty of its attainment.
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Mutual complacency is the atmosphere of conjugal love.
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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.
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Rags will always make their appearance where they have a right to do it.
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Faction seldom leaves a man honest, however it might find him.
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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.
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The seeds of knowledge may be planted in solitude, but must be cultivated in public.
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Spring is the season of gaiety, and winter of terror in spring the heart of tranquility dances to the melody of the groves, and the eye of benevolence sparkles at the sight of happiness and plenty: in winter, compassion melts at universal calamity, and the tear of softness starts at the wailing of hunger and the cries of the creation in distress
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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
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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.
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As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.
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He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.
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When there is no hope, there can be no endeavor.
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Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship.
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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.
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