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Knowledge always desires increase, it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
A blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another.
Samuel Johnson
Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.
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Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne judgment and friendship are like being enlivened.
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A contempt of the monuments and the wisdom of the past, may be justly reckoned one of the reigning follies of these days, to which pride and idleness have equally contributed.
Samuel Johnson
It is unpleasing to represent our affairs to our own disadvantage yet it is necessary to shew the evils which we desire to be removed.
Samuel Johnson
Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves.
Samuel Johnson
Political liberty is only good insofar as it produces private liberty.
Samuel Johnson
Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits the other recreates and revives them.
Samuel Johnson
I look upon this as I did upon the Dictionary: it is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.
Samuel Johnson
Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson
As any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice.
Samuel Johnson
Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us.
Samuel Johnson
Revenge is an act of passion vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged crimes are avenged.
Samuel Johnson
Mutual complacency is the atmosphere of conjugal love.
Samuel Johnson
Our minds should not be empty because if they are not preoccupied by good, evil will break in upon them.
Samuel Johnson
It is indeed certain, that whoever attempts any common topick, will find unexpected coincidences of his thoughts with those of other writers nor can the nicest judgment always distinguish accidental similitude from artful imitation.
Samuel Johnson
Happiness, said he, must be something solid and permanent, without fear and without uncertainty.
Samuel Johnson
The most Heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.
Samuel Johnson
No man can perform so little as not to have reason to congratulate himself on his merits, when he beholds the multitude that live in total idleness, and have never yet endeavoured to be useful.
Samuel Johnson
All envy is proportionate to desire we are uneasy at the attainments of another, according as we think our own happiness would be advanced by the addition of that which he withholds from us.
Samuel Johnson
