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It is our first duty to serve society.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
First
Serve
Duty
Society
Firsts
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim and when you are calculating, calculate.
Samuel Johnson
Distance either of time or place is sufficient to reconcile weak minds to wonderful relations.
Samuel Johnson
Wealth is nothing in itself it is not useful but when it departs from us.
Samuel Johnson
Wheresoe'er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new: Endless labor all along, Endless labor to be wrong: Phrase that Time has flung away Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.
Samuel Johnson
He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.
Samuel Johnson
The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another.
Samuel Johnson
Glory, the casual gift of thoughtless crowds! Glory, the bribe of avaricious virtue!
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
What ever the motive for the insult, it is always best to overlook it for folly doesn't deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect.
Samuel Johnson
Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is expected is already destroyed.
Samuel Johnson
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
Samuel Johnson
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?
Samuel Johnson
In questions of law or of fact conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him the rights of another man they must be known by rational investigation or historical inquiry.
Samuel Johnson
No man can have much kindness for him by whom he does not believe himself esteemed, and nothing so evidently proves esteem as imitation.
Samuel Johnson
Advice is seldom welcome. Those who need it most, like it least.
Samuel Johnson
Shakespeare never had six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven, but this does not refute my general assertion.
Samuel Johnson
That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.
Samuel Johnson
Merit rather enforces respect than attracts fondness.
Samuel Johnson
Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
Samuel Johnson
To proportion the eagerness of contest to its importance seems too hard a task for human wisdom. The pride of wit has kept ages busy in the discussion of useless questions, and the pride of power has destroyed armies, to gain or to keep unprofitable possessions.
Samuel Johnson
