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That man is never happy for the present is so true, that all his relief from unhappiness is only forgetting himself for a little while. Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

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
Little
Enjoyment
Never
Relief
Men
Progress
Life
Present
Forget
Happy
True
Forgetting
Littles
Unhappiness

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.
Samuel Johnson
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Round numbers are always false.
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The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence.
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Unless a woman has an amorous heart, she is a dull companion.
Samuel Johnson
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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
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Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.
Samuel Johnson
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Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty.
Samuel Johnson
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Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.
Samuel Johnson
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All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance.
Samuel Johnson
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There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth. It is apparent that men can be social beings no longer than they believe each other. When speech is employed only as the vehicle of falsehood, every man must disunite himself from others, inhabit his own cave and seek prey only for himself.
Samuel Johnson
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He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.
Samuel Johnson
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The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.
Samuel Johnson
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The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, were exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue.
Samuel Johnson
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Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance.
Samuel Johnson
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None of the projects or designs which exercise the mind of man are equally subject to obstructions and disappointments with the pursuit of fame.
Samuel Johnson
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Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order. - John V. Lindsay No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.
Samuel Johnson
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Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
Samuel Johnson
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How can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false? Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives
Samuel Johnson
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No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius.
Samuel Johnson
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He that never labors may know the pains of idleness, but not the pleasures.
Samuel Johnson