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We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Hope
Found
Keep
Obtaining
Others
Possessed
Long
Believes
Believe
Convinced
Never
Alive
Happiness
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
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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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.
Samuel Johnson
When we see our enemies and friends gliding away before us, let us not forget that we are subject to the general law of mortality, and shall soon be where our doom will be fixed forever.
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Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle for the calamities of life, like the necessities of Nature, are calls to labor and diligence.
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We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable.
Samuel Johnson
So scanty is our present allowance of happiness that in many situations life could scarcely be supported if hope were not allowed to relieve the present hour by pleasures borrowed from the future.
Samuel Johnson
Reason and truth will prevail at last
Samuel Johnson
All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance.
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The whole of life is but keeping away the thoughts of death.
Samuel Johnson
I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom.
Samuel Johnson
Why, sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, Sir, is not in Nature.
Samuel Johnson
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
Samuel Johnson
If in an actor there appears an utter vacancy of meaning, a frigid equality, a stupid languor, a torpid apathy, the greatest kindness that can be shown him is a speedy sentence of expulsion.
Samuel Johnson
We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure.
Samuel Johnson
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
Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship.
Samuel Johnson
One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
Samuel Johnson
Men have been wise in many different modes but they have always laughed the same way.
Samuel Johnson
There is nothing so minute, or inconsiderable, that I would not rather know it than not.
Samuel Johnson
Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is expected is already destroyed.
Samuel Johnson