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

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Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.
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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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When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
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Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disciplined by an easy separation...to die is the fate of man but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.
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He who endeavors to please must appear pleased.
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It is man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.
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The true art of memory is the art of attention.
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This is my history like all other histories, a narrative of misery.
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To love their country has been considered as virtue in men, whose love could not be otherwise than blind, because their preference was made without, a comparison but it has never been my fortune to find, either in ancient or modern writers, any honourable mention of those, who have, with equal blindness, hated their country.
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Hoc age ['do this'] is the great rule, whether you are serious or merry whether ... learning science or duty from a folio, or floating on the Thames. Intentions must be gathered from acts.
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Mutual complacency is the atmosphere of conjugal love.
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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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People may be taken in once, who imagine that an author is greater in private life than other men.
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Domestic discord is not inevitably and fatally necessary but yet it is not easy to avoid.
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High people, sir, are the best take a hundred ladies of quality, you'll find them better wives, better mothers, more willing to sacrifice their own pleasures to their children, than a hundred other woman.
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An old friend never can be found, and nature has provided that he cannot easily be lost.
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Misery is caused for the most part, not by a heavy crush of disaster, but by the corrosion of less visible evils, which canker enjoyment, and undermine security. The visit of an invader is necessarily rare, but domestic animosities allow no cessation.
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Flattery pleases very generally. In the first place, the flatterer may think what he says to be true but, in the second place, whether he thinks so or not, he certainly thinks those whom he flatters of consequence enough to be flattered.
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All power of fancy over reason is a degree of madness.
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All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us.
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