Quote

A man finds in the productions of nature an inexhaustible stock of material on which he can employ himself, without any temptations to envy or malevolence, and has always a certain prospect of discovering new reasons for adoring the sovereign author of the universe.

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
Reason
Productions
Employ
Without
Envy
Prospect
Always
Reasons
Sovereign
Men
Material
Stock
Materials
Discovering
Adoring
Universe
Author
Malevolence
Nature
Finds
Inexhaustible
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Temptation
Temptations

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The whole of life is but keeping away the thoughts of death.
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If the guardian or the mother Tell the woes of willful waste, Scorn their counsel and their pother, You can hang or drown at last.
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Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without any tears.
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To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.
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Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy, affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly the one completes a villain, the other only finishes a fop.
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To talk in public, to think in solitude, to read and to hear, to inquire and answer inquiries, is the business of the scholar
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The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.
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In solitude we have our dreams to ourselves, and in company we agree to dream in concert.
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The most useful truths are always universal, and unconnected with accidents and customs.
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You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.
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If a man is in doubt whether it would be better for him to expose himself to martyrdom or not, he should not do it. He must be convinced that he has a delegation from heaven.
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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.
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There are, indeed, few kinds of composition from which an author, however learned or ingenious, can hope a long continuance of fame.
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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.
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The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.
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Glory, the casual gift of thoughtless crowds! Glory, the bribe of avaricious virtue!
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No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
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One of the most pernicious effects of haste is obscurity.
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Very few live by choice. Every man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, and with which he did not always willingly cooperate and therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbor better than his own.
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Every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from time to come.
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