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Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.

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
Words
Bigs
Language
Use
Inspirational
Littles
Little
Accustom
Matter
Matters

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A man finds in the productions of nature an inexhaustible stock of material on which he can employ himself, without any temptations to envy or malevolence, and has always a certain prospect of discovering new reasons for adoring the sovereign author of the universe.
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The mathematicians are well acquainted with the difference between pure science, which has only to do with ideas, and the application of its laws to the use of life, in which they are constrained to submit to the imperfections of matter and the influence of accidents.
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No one is much pleased with a companion who does not increase, in some respect, their fondness for themselves.
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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.
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Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility.
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Truth allows no choice.
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A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
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All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us.
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The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercized in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions.
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The insolence of wealth will creep out.
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The truly strong and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.
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How gloomy would be the mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he should never die: that what now acts shall continue its agency, and what now thinks shall think on forever!
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No evil is insupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong.
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Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive for a man may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent qualities as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight.
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Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of language.
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The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.
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In solitude we have our dreams to ourselves, and in company we agree to dream in concert.
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Expectation improperly indulged in must end in disappointment.
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There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
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That observation which is called knowledge of the world will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good.
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