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Since life itself is uncertain, nothing which has life for its basis can boast much stability.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
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Literary Critic
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Life
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Uncertain
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.
Samuel Johnson
Learn the leading precognita of all things-no need to turn over leaf by leaf, but grasp the trunk hard and you will shake all the branches. Advice cherished by Samuel Johnson that that, if one is to master any subject, one must first discover its general principles.
Samuel Johnson
Study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves
Samuel Johnson
This is my history like all other histories, a narrative of misery.
Samuel Johnson
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.
Samuel Johnson
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.
Samuel Johnson
Excise: A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.
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
Whatever is formed for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity.
Samuel Johnson
All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance.
Samuel Johnson
Every man is prompted by the love of himself to imagine that he possesses some qualities superior, either in kind or degree, to those which he sees allotted to the rest of the world.
Samuel Johnson
As to the rout that is made about people who are ruined by extravagance, it is no matter to the nation that some individuals suffer. When so much general productive exertion is the consequence of luxury, the nation does not care though there are debtors nay, they would not care though their creditors were there too.
Samuel Johnson
Pleasure itself is not a vice
Samuel Johnson
The mind is seldom quickened to very vigorous operations but by pain, or the dread of pain. We do not disturb ourselves with the detection of fallacies which do us no harm.
Samuel Johnson
I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.
Samuel Johnson
I have always said the first Whig was the Devil.
Samuel Johnson
Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.
Samuel Johnson
They make a rout about universal liberty, without considering that all that is to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty.
Samuel Johnson
All power of fancy over reason is a degree of madness.
Samuel Johnson
To scatter praise or blame without regard to justice is to destroy the distinction of good and evil. Many have no other test of actions than general opinion and all are so far influenced by a sense of reputation that they are often restrained by fear of reproach, and excited by hope of honour, when other principles have lost their power.
Samuel Johnson
