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Age is rarely despised but when it is, contemptible.

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
Despised
Despise
Rarely
Age
Hate
Contemptible

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Hunting was the labour of the savages of North America, but the amusement of the gentlemen of England.
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Wealth is nothing in itself it is not useful but when it departs from us.
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Those that have done nothing in life, are not qualified to judge of those that have done little
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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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You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.
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To go and see one druidical temple is only to see that it is nothing, for there is neither art nor power in it and seeing one is quite enough.
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The maxim of Cleobulus, Mediocrity is best, has been long considered a universal principle, extending through the whole compass of life and nature. The experience of every age seems to have given it new confirmation, and to show that nothing, however specious or alluring, is pursued with propriety or enjoyed with safety beyond certain limits.
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I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning, for that is sure good. I would let him at first read any English book which happens to engage his attention because you have done a great deal when you have brought him to have entertainment from a book. He'll get better books afterwards.
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When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.
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Study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves
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The first step to greatness is to be honest.
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Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religions hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper and deeper.
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Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.
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A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.
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It is man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.
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All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance.
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I am a hardened and shameless tea drinker, who has, for twenty years, diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant whose kettle has scarcely time to cool who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and, with tea, welcomes the morning.
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This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, slow rises worth by poverty depressed.
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I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.
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Memory is like all other human powers, with which no man can be satisfied who measures them by what he can conceive, or by what he can desire.
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