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There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
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Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity but art and nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects, and every moment produces something new to him who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation.
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Had I learned to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.
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Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
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A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one.
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Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
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It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy unenvied, to be healthful without physic, and secure without a guard to obtain from the bounty of nature, what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of artists and attendants, of flatterers and spies.
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In general those parents have the most reverence who most deserve it for he that lives well cannot be despised.
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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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About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right.
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There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.
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What signifies protesting so against flattery when a person speaks well of one, it must either be true or false, you know if true, let us rejoice in his good opinion if he lies, it is a proof at least that he loves more to please me, than to sit s
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Men go to sea, before they know the unhappiness of that way of life and when they have come to know it, they cannot escape from it, because it is then too late to choose another profession as indeed is generally the case with men, when they have once engaged in any particular way of life.
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Want of tenderness is want of parts, and is no less a proof of stupidity than depravity.
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The really happy woman is the one who can enjoy the scenery when she has to take a detour. Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but rather a manner of traveling.
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The truly strong and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.
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Our senses, our appetite, and our passions are our lawful and faithful guides in things that relate solely to this life.
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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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A soldier's time is passed in distress and danger, or in idleness and corruption.
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