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Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity but art and nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects, and every moment produces something new to him who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation.

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
Human
Intellect
Faculties
Humans
Indeed
Novelty
Every
Necessary
Produces
Alacrity
Something
Produce
Preserve
Quickened
Life
Moment
Preserves
Intellects
Moments
Faculty
Inexhaustible
Art
Observation
Eagerness
Nature
Stores
Diligent

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Words become low by the occasions to which they are applied, or the general character of them who use them and the disgust which they produce arises from the revival of those images with which they are commonly united.
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The peculiar doctrine of Christianity is that of a universal sacrifice and perpetual propitiation.
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A fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that hardly resembles a man. The value of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot.
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Who left nothing of authorship untouched, and touched nothing which he did not adorn. [Lat., Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.]
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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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Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.
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Every man has something to do which he neglects, every man has faults to conquer which he delays to combat.
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If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.
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No wonder, Sir, that he is vain a man who is perpetually flattered in every mode that can be conceived. So many bellows have blown the fire, that one wonders he is not by this time become a cinder.
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To do nothing is in everyone's power.
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We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
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Pleasure that is obtained by unreasonable and unsuitable cost must always end in pain.
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All truth is valuable, and satirical criticism may be considered as useful when it rectifies error and improves judgment he that refines the public taste is a public benefactor.
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Some people wave their dogmatic thinking until their own reason is entangled.
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[The poet] must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place.
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Of many, imagined blessings it may be doubted whether he that wants or possesses them had more reason to be satisfied with his lot.
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Truth has no gradations nothing which admits of increase can be so much what it is, as truth is truth. There may be a strange thing, and a thing more strange. But if a proposition be true, there can be none more true.
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Our aspirations are our possibilities.
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Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship.
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Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.
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