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The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.
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
To be flattered is grateful, even when we know that our praises are not believed by those who pronounce them for they prove, at least, our power, and show that our favour is valued, since it is purchased by the meanness of falsehood.
Samuel Johnson
The roads of science are narrow, so that they who travel them, must wither follow or meet one another.
Samuel Johnson
A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists without any practical regard to morals and religion he may be learning not to live but to reason... while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unreformed.
Samuel Johnson
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.
Samuel Johnson
Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.
Samuel Johnson
I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
Samuel Johnson
These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes.
Samuel Johnson
When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.
Samuel Johnson
There ambush here relentless ruffians lay, And here the fell attorney prowls for prey.
Samuel Johnson
Those authors who would find many readers, must endeavour to please while they instruct.
Samuel Johnson
He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience. We have always protected the Americans we may therefore subject them to government.
Samuel Johnson
Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge is to a forest.
Samuel Johnson
In general those parents have the most reverence who most deserve it for he that lives well cannot be despised.
Samuel Johnson
Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage.
Samuel Johnson
He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel.
Samuel Johnson
Credulity is the common failing of inexperienced virtue and he who is spontaneously suspicious may justly be charged with radical corruption.
Samuel Johnson
The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay.
Samuel Johnson
Nothing is more common than to find men, whose works are now totally neglected, mentioned with praises by their contemporaries as the oracles of their age, and the legislators of science.
Samuel Johnson
A fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that hardly resembles a man. The value of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot.
Samuel Johnson
Let him go abroad to a distant country let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.
Samuel Johnson
