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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
Lexicographer
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Little
Accustom
Matter
Matters
Words
Bigs
Language
Use
Inspirational
Littles

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There is not, perhaps, to a mind well instructed, a more painful occurrence, than the death of one we have injured without reparation.
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That friendship may be at once fond and lasting, there must not only be equal virtue on each part, but virtue of the same kind not only the same end must be proposed, but the same means must be approved by both.
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The ambition of superior sensibility and superior eloquence disposes the lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and communicate it at another and each labors first to impose upon himself and then to propagate the imposture.
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Rain is good for vegetables, and for the animals who eat those vegetables, and for the animals who eat those animals.
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Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
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Whatever is formed for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity.
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Critics, like the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest.
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Words are but the signs of ideas.
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Shakespeare never had six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven, but this does not refute my general assertion.
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It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.
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Pope had been flattered till he thought himself one of the moving powers of the system of life. When he talked of laying down his pen, those who sat round him intreated and implored and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that they went away and laughed.
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I wish there were some cure, like the lover's leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession.
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That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.
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Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, I did not give it to the man, but to humanity.
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The faults of a writer of acknowledged excellence are more dangerous, because the influence of his example is more extensive and the interest of learning requires that they should be discovered and stigmatized, before they have the sanction of antiquity conferred upon them, and become precedents of indisputable authority.
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To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship.
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Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality they discourse like angels, but they live like men.
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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.
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Power is gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent.
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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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