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He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.

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
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Quit
Quitting
Uncertainty
Certainty
Wise
Wisdom
Men

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Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression we must always purpose to do more or better than in time past.
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There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
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If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim.
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Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.
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Ignorance cannot always be inferred from inaccuracy knowledge is not always present.
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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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To those who have lived long together, everything heard and everything seen recalls some pleasure communicated, some benefit conferred, some petty quarrel or some slight endearment. Esteem of great powers, or amiable qualities newly discovered may embroider a day or a week, but a friendship of twenty years is interwoven with the texture of life.
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Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured.
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Scarce any man becomes eminently disagreeable but by a departure from his real character, and an attempt at something for which nature or education has left him unqualified.
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None but a fool worries about things he cannot influence.
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Men become friends by a community of pleasures.
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A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.
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Shakespeare never had six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven, but this does not refute my general assertion.
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To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.
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The mind is refrigerated by interruption the thoughts are diverted from the principle subject the reader is weary, he suspects not why and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied.
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A small country town is not the place in which one would choose to quarrel with a wife every human being in such places is a spy.
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It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called, by the generality of mankind, a particular genius.
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A contempt of the monuments and the wisdom of the past, may be justly reckoned one of the reigning follies of these days, to which pride and idleness have equally contributed.
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Life is but short no time can be afforded but for the indulgence of real sorry, or contests upon questions seriously momentous. Let us not throw away any of our days upon useless resentment, or contend who shall hold out longest in stubborn malignity. It is best not to be angry and best, in the next place, to be quickly reconciled.
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This is my history like all other histories, a narrative of misery.
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