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All intellectual improvement arises from leisure.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
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Intellectual

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Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness for great things cannot have escaped former observation.
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I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.
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To build is to be robbed.
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Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent.
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It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.
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A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists without any practical regard to morals and religion he may be learning not to live but to reason... while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unreformed.
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Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, I did not give it to the man, but to humanity.
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All is not gold that glitters, as we have often been told and the adage is verified in your place and my favour but if what happens does not make us richer, we must bid it welcome, if it makes us wiser.
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An author places himself uncalled before the tribunal of criticism and solicits fame at the hazard of disgrace.
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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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People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to amuse them.
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Whatever advantage we snatch beyond a certain portion allotted us by at nature, is like money spent before it is due, which, at the time of regular payment, will be missed and regretted.
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It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence.
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The mischief of flattery is, not that it persuades any man that he is what he is not, but that it suppresses the influence of honest ambition, by raising an opinion that honour may be gained without the toil of merit.
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I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.
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Stand Firm for your country, and become a man Honour'd and lov'd: It were a noble life, To be found dead, embracing her.
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A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.
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Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.
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Credulity is the common failing of inexperienced virtue and he who is spontaneously suspicious may justly be charged with radical corruption.
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How can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false? Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives
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