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Those that have done nothing in life, are not qualified to judge of those that have done little

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
Judge
Judging
Littles
Little
Nothing
Done
Life
Qualified

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Sir, there is no end of negative criticism.
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It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.
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Profuseness is a cruel and crafty demon, that gradually involves her followers in dependence and debt that is, fetters them with irons that enter into their souls.
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Where there is emulation, there will be vanity where there is vanity, there will be folly.
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What is said upon a subject is gathered from an hundred people.
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People may be taken in once, who imagine that an author is greater in private life than other men.
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If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.
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The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
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Fate wings, with every wish, the afflictive dart, Each gift of nature, and each grace of art.
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Among the calamities of war may be numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.
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Age is rarely despised but when it is, contemptible.
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He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
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Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.
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Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.
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The seeds of knowledge may be planted in solitude, but must be cultivated in public.
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The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.
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Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.
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In a man's letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.
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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.
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There is not, perhaps, to a mind well instructed, a more painful occurrence, than the death of one we have injured without reparation.
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