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Happiness is enjoyed only in proportion as it is known and such is the state or folly of man, that it is known only by experience of its contrary.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Bookseller
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Happiness
Experience
Folly
States
Proportion
Men
Enjoyed
Contrary
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Known
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
It is much easier not to write like a man than to write like a woman.
Samuel Johnson
Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness for great things cannot have escaped former observation.
Samuel Johnson
One of the amusements of idleness is reading without fatigue of close attention and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read.
Samuel Johnson
In my early years I read very hard. It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as much at eighteen as I do now.
Samuel Johnson
Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay an author.
Samuel Johnson
It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.
Samuel Johnson
Spite and ill-nature are among the most expensive luxuries in life.
Samuel Johnson
Discord generally operates in little things it is inflamed ... by contrariety of taste oftener than principles.
Samuel Johnson
There is no book so poor that it would not be a prodigy if wholly made by a single man.
Samuel Johnson
Though it is evident, that not more than one age or people can deserve the censure of being more averse from learning than any other, yet at all times knowledge must have encountered impediments, and wit been mortified with contempt, or harassed with persecution.
Samuel Johnson
The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy their real faults are immediately detected and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an individual weight of calumny will be super-added.
Samuel Johnson
I have no more pleasure in hearing a man attempting wit and failing, than in seeing a man trying to leap over a ditch and tumbling into it
Samuel Johnson
Hope is necessary in every condition.
Samuel Johnson
The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in a few words.
Samuel Johnson
The mere power of saving what is already in our hands must be of easy acquisition to every mind and as the example of Lord Bacon may show that the highest intellect cannot safely neglect it, a thousand instances every day prove that the humblest may practise it with success.
Samuel Johnson
The mathematicians are well acquainted with the difference between pure science, which has only to do with ideas, and the application of its laws to the use of life, in which they are constrained to submit to the imperfections of matter and the influence of accidents.
Samuel Johnson
It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend.
Samuel Johnson
If I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him.
Samuel Johnson
Domestic discord is not inevitably and fatally necessary but yet it is not easy to avoid.
Samuel Johnson
Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other.
Samuel Johnson
