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It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Dr Johnson
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religions hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper and deeper.
Samuel Johnson
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Languages are the pedigree of nations.
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Nothing is more common than for men to make partial and absurd distinctions between vices of equal enormity, and to observe some of the divine commands with great scrupulousness, while they violate others, equally important, without any concern, or the least apparent conciousness of guilt. Alas, it is only wisdom which perceives this tragedy.
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Few have abilities so much needed by the rest of the world as to be caressed on their own terms and he that will not condescend to recommend himself by external embellishments must submit to the fate of just sentiment meanly expressed, and be ridiculed and forgotten before he is understood.
Samuel Johnson
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With what hope can we endeavor to persuade the ladies that the time spent at the toilet is lost in vanity.
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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.
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Babies do not want to hear about babies they like to be told of giants and castles.
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There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that Nature has given him something peculiar to himself.
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Language is the dress of thought and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy
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It is much easier not to write like a man than to write like a woman.
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The parallel circumstances and kindred images to which we readily conform our minds are, above all other writings, to be found in the lives of particular persons, and therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography.
Samuel Johnson
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Every man has something to do which he neglects, every man has faults to conquer which he delays to combat.
Samuel Johnson
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Sir, there is no end of negative criticism.
Samuel Johnson
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The complaint, therefore, that all topicks are preoccupied, is nothing more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness, by which some discourage others, and some themselves the mutability of mankind will always furnish writers with new images, and the luxuriance of fancy may always embellish them with new decorations.
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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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Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding can expect only to improve a single science.
Samuel Johnson
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Read the book you do honestly feel a wish and curiosity to read.
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An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty.
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We may have uneasy feelings for seeing a creature in distress without pity for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them.
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Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge is to a forest.
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