Quote

There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that Nature has given him something peculiar to himself.

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
Every
Desire
Something
Given
Inclines
Believe
Nature
Lurks
Men
Firsts
Incline
Human
Peculiar
Humans
Distinction
First
Perhaps
Heart
Hope

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I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom.
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Spite and ill-nature are among the most expensive luxuries in life.
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The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay.
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Knock the 't' off the 'can't.'
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Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words.
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You never find people laboring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful income.
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Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is expected is already destroyed.
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Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. Every advance into knowledge opens new prospects, and produces new incitements to farther progress.
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Poetry cannot be translation
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One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
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It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence.
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No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.
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Since life itself is uncertain, nothing which has life for its basis can boast much stability.
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Was there ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's Progress?
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The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.
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Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is but it is not easy to tell what it is.
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Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals.
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Nothing can be truly great which is not right.
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He that resigns his peace to little casualties, and suffers the course of his life to be interrupted for fortuitous inadvertencies or offences, delivers up himself to the direction of the wind, and loses all that constancy and equanimity which constitutes the chief praise of a wise man.
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Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.
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