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Pain is less subject than pleasure to careless expression.

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
Pain
Careless
Subject
Subjects
Expression
Pleasure
Less

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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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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Confidence is a plant of slow growth especially in an aged bosom
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The misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated.
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Life is but short no time can be afforded but for the indulgence of real sorry, or contests upon questions seriously momentous. Let us not throw away any of our days upon useless resentment, or contend who shall hold out longest in stubborn malignity. It is best not to be angry and best, in the next place, to be quickly reconciled.
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Discord generally operates in little things it is inflamed ... by contrariety of taste oftener than principles.
Samuel Johnson
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Scarce any man becomes eminently disagreeable but by a departure from his real character, and an attempt at something for which nature or education has left him unqualified.
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How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?
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If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.
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When two Eglishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.
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A man of sense and education should meet a suitable companion in a wife. It is a miserable thing when the conversation can only be such as whether the mutton should be boiled or roasted, and probably a dispute about that.
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As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles.
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He that voluntarily continues in ignorance, is guilty of all the crimes which ignorance produces.
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No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.... There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government.
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Languages are the pedigree of nations.
Samuel Johnson
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Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions
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Age is rarely despised but when it is, contemptible.
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.
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Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.
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There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse.
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Cautious age suspects the flattering form, and only credits what experience tells.
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