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I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.

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
Politician
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Would
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Silent
Works
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Powerful
Rather
Unnoticed
Art
Attacked
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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Pleasure that is obtained by unreasonable and unsuitable cost must always end in pain.
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Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.
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Knock the 't' off the 'can't.'
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There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse.
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Truth allows no choice.
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The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
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It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.
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There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow.
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Your aspirations are your possibilities.
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The heroes of literary history have been no less remarkable for what they have suffered than for what they have achieved.
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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.
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He who is extravagant will quickly become poor and poverty will enforce dependence, and invite corruption.
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Thought is always troublesome to him who lives without his own approbation.
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The great effect of friendship is beneficence, yet by the first act of uncommon kindness it is endangered.
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Gaiety is to good-humor as animal perfumes to vegetable fragrance. The one overpowers weak spirits, the other recreates and revives them. Gaiety seldom fails to give some pain good-humor boasts no faculties which every one does not believe in his own power, and pleases principally by not offending.
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There are certain topicks which are never exhausted. Of some images and sentiments the mind of man may be said to be enamoured it meets them, however often they occur, with the same ardour which a lover feels at the sight of his mistress, and parts from them with the same regret when they can no longer be enjoyed.
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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.
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My dear friend, clear your mind of can't.
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The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
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Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
Samuel Johnson