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men do not suspect faults which they do not commit

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
Teacher
Translator
Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Suspect
Suspects
Commit
Faults
Men

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The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth.
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All truth is valuable, and satirical criticism may be considered as useful when it rectifies error and improves judgment he that refines the public taste is a public benefactor.
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No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.
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Irresolution and mutability are often the faults of men whose views are wide, and whose imagination is vigorous and excursive.
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This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.
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In life's last scene what prodigies surprise, Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise! From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow, And Swift expires a driveller and a show.
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An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty.
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Scarcely any degree of judgment is sufficient to restrain the imagination from magnifying that on which it is long detained
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I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.
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Assertion is not argument to contradict the statement of an opponent is not proof that you are correct.
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The really happy woman is the one who can enjoy the scenery when she has to take a detour. Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but rather a manner of traveling.
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You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money to those who work, as the recompense of their labor, than when you give money merely in charity.
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Most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them.
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Don't tell me of deception a lie is a lie, whether it be a lie to the eye or a lie to the ear.
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We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
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That all who are happy are equally happy is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. A small drinking glass and a large one may be equally full, but the large one holds more than the small.
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It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous.
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Those whose abilities or knowledge incline them most to deviate from the general round of life are recalled from eccentricity by the laws of their existence.
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He who sees different ways to the same end, will, unless he watches carefully over his own conduct, lay out too much of his attention upon the comparison of probabilities and the adjustment of expedients, and pause in the choice of his road, till some accident intercepts his journey.
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Whatever advantage we snatch beyond a certain portion allotted us by at nature, is like money spent before it is due, which, at the time of regular payment, will be missed and regretted.
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