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Your manuscript is both good and original but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down.
Samuel Johnson
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Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson
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No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
Samuel Johnson
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Slavery is now nowhere more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.
Samuel Johnson
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How can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false? Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives
Samuel Johnson
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Life is but short no time can be afforded but for the indulgence of real sorry, or contests upon questions seriously momentous. Let us not throw away any of our days upon useless resentment, or contend who shall hold out longest in stubborn malignity. It is best not to be angry and best, in the next place, to be quickly reconciled.
Samuel Johnson
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All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance.
Samuel Johnson
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Pope had been flattered till he thought himself one of the moving powers of the system of life. When he talked of laying down his pen, those who sat round him intreated and implored and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that they went away and laughed.
Samuel Johnson
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Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of language.
Samuel Johnson
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Justice is indispensably and universally necessary, and what is necessary must always be limited, uniform, and distinct
Samuel Johnson
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The balls of sight are so formed, that one man's eyes are spectacles to another, to read his heart with.
Samuel Johnson
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To set the mind above the appetites is the end of abstinence, which one of the Fathers observes to be not a virtue, but the groundwork of virtue.
Samuel Johnson
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He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.
Samuel Johnson
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Friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness and its permanence from the other.
Samuel Johnson
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Learn that the present hour alone is man's.
Samuel Johnson
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Discord generally operates in little things it is inflamed ... by contrariety of taste oftener than principles.
Samuel Johnson
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Every man, however hopeless his pretensions may appear, has some project by which he hopes to rise to reputation some art by which he imagines that the attention of the world will be attracted some quality, good or bad, which discriminates him from the common herd of mortals, and by which others may be persuaded to love, or compelled to fear him.
Samuel Johnson
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Since life itself is uncertain, nothing which has life for its basis can boast much stability.
Samuel Johnson
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The gloomy and the resentful are always found among those who have nothing to do or who do nothing.
Samuel Johnson
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Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.
Samuel Johnson