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Each person's work is always a portrait of himself.

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
Success
Persons
Person
Work
Always
Portrait
Portraits

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.
Samuel Johnson
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The liberty of using harmless pleasure will not be disputed but it is still to be examined what pleasures are harmless.
Samuel Johnson
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If a man is in doubt whether it would be better for him to expose himself to martyrdom or not, he should not do it. He must be convinced that he has a delegation from heaven.
Samuel Johnson
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Care that is once enter'd into the breast Will have the whole possession ere it rest.
Samuel Johnson
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All theory is against free will all experience is for it.
Samuel Johnson
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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
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The gloomy and the resentful are always found among those who have nothing to do or who do nothing.
Samuel Johnson
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Our minds should not be empty because if they are not preoccupied by good, evil will break in upon them.
Samuel Johnson
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The labor of rising from the ground will be great, ... but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall.
Samuel Johnson
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Apologies are seldom of any use.
Samuel Johnson
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The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercized in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions.
Samuel Johnson
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Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion.
Samuel Johnson
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To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude it is not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
Samuel Johnson
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No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance, or to extinguish the desire of fond endearments and tender officiousness and, therefore, no one should think it unnecessary to learn those arts by which friendship may be gained.
Samuel Johnson
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Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.
Samuel Johnson
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Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship.
Samuel Johnson
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There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse.
Samuel Johnson
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What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.
Samuel Johnson
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Foppery is never cured it is the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, are never rectified once a coxcomb always a coxcomb.
Samuel Johnson
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With what hope can we endeavor to persuade the ladies that the time spent at the toilet is lost in vanity.
Samuel Johnson