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Wickedness is always easier than virtue for it takes the short cut to everything.

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
Short
Cutting
Easier
Virtue
Takes
Evil
Everything
Always
Wickedness

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Small debts are like small shot they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon of loud noise, but little danger.
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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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Everybody loves to have things which please the palate put in their way, without trouble or preparation.
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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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Language is the dress of thought and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy
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Reason and truth will prevail at last
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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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The fiction of happiness is propagated by every tongue and confirmed by every look till at last all profess the joy which they do not feel and consent to yield to the general delusion.
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Excise: A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.
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No man can have much kindness for him by whom he does not believe himself esteemed, and nothing so evidently proves esteem as imitation.
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[The poet] must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place.
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Where there is no difficulty there is no praise.
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As pride sometimes is hid under humility, idleness if often covered by turbulence and hurry.
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That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.
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He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience. We have always protected the Americans we may therefore subject them to government.
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One of the aged greatest miseries is that they cannot easily find a companion able to share the memories of the past.
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