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When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
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
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Literary Critic
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
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Fortnight
Concentrates
Hanged
Wonderfully
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes.
Samuel Johnson
Poverty has, in large cities, very different appearances it is often concealed in splendour, and often in extravagance.
Samuel Johnson
Sir, if a man has a mind to prance, he must study at Christ Church and All Souls.
Samuel Johnson
The uniform necessities of human nature produce in a great measure uniformity of life, and for part of the day make one place like another to dress and to undress, to eat and to sleep, are the same in London as in the country.
Samuel Johnson
The authors that in any nation last from age to age are very few, because there are very few that have any other claim to notice than that they catch hold on present curiosity, and gratify some accidental desire, or produce some temporary conveniency.
Samuel Johnson
There is no idleness, by which we are so easily seduced, as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business, and by making the loiterer imagine that he has something to do which must not be neglected, keeps him in perpetual agitation, and hurries him rapidly from place to place.
Samuel Johnson
When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.
Samuel Johnson
Laws teach us to know when we commit injury and when we suffer it.
Samuel Johnson
I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.
Samuel Johnson
Try and forget our cares and sickness, and contribute, as we can to the happiness of each other.
Samuel Johnson
We have now learned that rashness and imprudence will not be deterred from taking credit let us try whether fraud and avarice may be more easily restrained from giving it.
Samuel Johnson
No man likes to live under the eye of perpetual disapprobation.
Samuel Johnson
Sleep undisturbed within this peaceful shrine, Till angels wake thee with a note like thine.
Samuel Johnson
As the faculty of writing has chiefly been a masculine endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has always been thrown upon the women.
Samuel Johnson
A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him.
Samuel Johnson
People seldom read a book which is given to them and few are given. The way to spread a work is to sell it at a low price. No man will send to buy a thing that costs even sixpence without an intention to read it.
Samuel Johnson
A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.
Samuel Johnson
Any of us would kill a cow rather than not have beef.
Samuel Johnson
Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding can expect only to improve a single science.
Samuel Johnson
I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.
Samuel Johnson
