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To excite opposition and inflame malevolence is the unhappy privilege of courage made arrogant by consciousness of strength.

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
Privilege
Courage
Inflame
Malevolence
Strength
Excite
Consciousness
Arrogant
Made
Arrogance
Opposition
Unhappy

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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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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Your aspirations are your possibilities.
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What I gained by being in France was learning to be better satisfied with my own country.
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Golf is a game in which you claim the privileges of age, and retain the playthings of childhood.
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You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.
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We must consider how very little history there is--I mean real, authentic history. That certain kings reigned and certain battles were fought, we can depend upon as true but all the coloring, all the philosophy, of history is conjecture.
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Do not ... hope wholly to reason away your troubles do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind.
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I am a friend to subordination, as most conducive to the happiness of society. There is a reciprocal pleasure in governing and being governed.
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Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.
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Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.
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Year chases year, decay pursues decay, Still drops some joy from with'ring life away New forms arise, and diff'rent views engage
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What is said upon a subject is gathered from an hundred people.
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Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
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I have always said the first Whig was the Devil.
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A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
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Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is but it is not easy to tell what it is.
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The wickedness of a loose or profane author is more atrocious than that of a giddy libertine or drunken ravisher, not only because it extends its effects wider, as a pestilence that taints the air is more destructive than poison infused in a draught, but because it is committed with cool deliberation.
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The perfect day for quitting is not real. It will never come, so might as well start today
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Political liberty is only good insofar as it produces private liberty.
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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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