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Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Bookseller
Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
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Enterprise

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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.
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When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, Distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.
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Those who have any intention of deviating from the beaten roads of life, and acquiring a reputation superior to names hourly swept away by time among the refuse of fame, should add to their reason and their spirit the power of persisting in their pur
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Fate wings, with every wish, the afflictive dart, Each gift of nature, and each grace of art.
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Suspicion is very often a useless pain.
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One of the most pernicious effects of haste is obscurity.
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We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures
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You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.
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Words are but the signs of ideas.
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Men are like stone jugs - you may lug them where you like by the ears.
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Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves.
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Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.
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Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits the other recreates and revives them.
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The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.
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The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.
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Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.
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When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.
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None can be pleased without praise, and few can be praised without falsehood.
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Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree. We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
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