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We may have many acquaintances, but we can have but few friends this made Aristotle say that he that hath many friends hath none.

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
Hath
None
Friends
May
Many
Made
Acquaintances
Aristotle
Acquaintance

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Critics, like the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest.
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To talk in public, to think in solitude, to read and to hear, to inquire and answer inquiries, is the business of the scholar
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We are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure.
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When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.
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Such are the vicissitudes of the world, through all its parts, that day and night, labor and rest, hurry and retirement, endear each other such are the changes that keep the mind in action: we desire, we pursue, we obtain, we are satiated we desire something else and begin a new pursuit.
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Claret is the liquor for boys port for men but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.
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A voyage to the moon, however romantick and absurd the scheme may now appear, since the properties of air have been better understood, seemed highly probable to many of the aspiring wits in the last century
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The roads of science are narrow, so that they who travel them, must wither follow or meet one another.
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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.
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Much is due to those who first broke the way to knowledge, and left only to their successors the task of smoothing it.
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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.
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Avarice is a uniform and tractable vice other intellectual distempers are different in different constitutions of mind. That which soothes the pride of one will offend the pride of another, but to the favor of the covetous bring money, and nothing is denied.
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Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.
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Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.
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It is the just doom of laziness and gluttony to be inactive without ease and drowsy without tranquility.
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To have the management of the mind is a great art, and it may be attained in a considerable degree by experience and habitual exercise.
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Books without the knowledge of life are useless.
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A writer who obtains his full purpose loses himself in his own lustre.
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Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.
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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.
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