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When there is no hope, there can be no endeavor.

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
Endeavor
Hope

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty.
Samuel Johnson
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He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.
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Hoc age ['do this'] is the great rule, whether you are serious or merry whether ... learning science or duty from a folio, or floating on the Thames. Intentions must be gathered from acts.
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Domestic discord is not inevitably and fatally necessary but yet it is not easy to avoid.
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No one ever became great by imitation.
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Dishonor waits on perfidy. A man should blush to think a falsehood it is the crime of cowards.
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Cunning has effect from the credulity of others, rather than from the abilities of those who are cunning. It requires no extraordinary talents to lie and deceive.
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It is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. You may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learned them both.
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Every reader should remember the diffidence of Socrates, and repair by his candour the injuries of time: he should impute the seeming defects of his author to some chasm of intelligence, and suppose that the sense which is now weak was once forcible
Samuel Johnson
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Books have always a secret influence on the understanding we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas he that reads books of science, thogh without any fixed desire of improvement, will grow more knowing.
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Consider what importance to society the chastity of women is. Upon that all the property in the world depends. We hang a thief for stealing a sheep but the unchastity of a woman transfers sheep and farm and all from the right owner.
Samuel Johnson
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The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.
Samuel Johnson
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Every human being whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge.
Samuel Johnson
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In all pleasures hope is a considerable part.
Samuel Johnson
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The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.
Samuel Johnson
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Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson
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Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotsman to draw the trigger at his death.
Samuel Johnson
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People may be taken in once, who imagine that an author is greater in private life than other men.
Samuel Johnson
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About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right.
Samuel Johnson
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Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.
Samuel Johnson