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What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.
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
Pardon
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Rest
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Provokes
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
The fiction of happiness is propagated by every tongue and confirmed by every look till at last all profess the joy which they do not feel and consent to yield to the general delusion.
Samuel Johnson
Such is the constitution of man that labour may be styled its own reward nor will any external incitements be requisite, if it be considered how much happiness is gained, and how much misery escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body.
Samuel Johnson
A mere literary man is a dull man a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.
Samuel Johnson
Never trust your tongue when your heart is bitter.
Samuel Johnson
Credulity is the common failing of inexperienced virtue and he who is spontaneously suspicious may justly be charged with radical corruption.
Samuel Johnson
About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right.
Samuel Johnson
The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.
Samuel Johnson
I will take no more physick, not even my opiates for I have prayed that I may render up my soul to God unclouded.
Samuel Johnson
Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive for a man may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent qualities as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight.
Samuel Johnson
Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.
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
Nature never gives everything at once.
Samuel Johnson
Large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most common topics of falsehood.
Samuel Johnson
It is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. You may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learned them both.
Samuel Johnson
The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment.
Samuel Johnson
The highest panegyric, therefore, that private virtue can receive, is the praise of servants.
Samuel Johnson
Our minds should not be empty because if they are not preoccupied by good, evil will break in upon them.
Samuel Johnson
Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.
Samuel Johnson
Pound St. Paul's Church into atoms, and consider any single atom it is to be sure, good for nothing but put all these atoms together, and you have St. Paul's Church. So it is with human felicity, which is made up of many ingredients, each of which may be shown to be very insignificant.
Samuel Johnson
Condemned to Hope's delusive mine, As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blasts or slow decline Our social comforts drop away.
Samuel Johnson
