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What signifies protesting so against flattery when a person speaks well of one, it must either be true or false, you know if true, let us rejoice in his good opinion if he lies, it is a proof at least that he loves more to please me, than to sit s

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Well
Least
Rejoice
Must
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Speaks
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Lying
False
Speak
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Signifies
Persons
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Protesting
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Please
Flattery
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Deceit

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning, for that is sure good. I would let him at first read any English book which happens to engage his attention because you have done a great deal when you have brought him to have entertainment from a book. He'll get better books afterwards.
Samuel Johnson
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There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets.
Samuel Johnson
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In questions of law or of fact conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him the rights of another man they must be known by rational investigation or historical inquiry.
Samuel Johnson
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That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments...
Samuel Johnson
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There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.
Samuel Johnson
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The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.
Samuel Johnson
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Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.
Samuel Johnson
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Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.
Samuel Johnson
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I am willing to love all of mankind, except an American.
Samuel Johnson
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Trust as little as you can to report, and examine all you can by your own senses.
Samuel Johnson
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He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.
Samuel Johnson
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What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
Samuel Johnson
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It is better to live rich than to die rich.
Samuel Johnson
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Some claim a place in the list of patriots, by an acrimonious and unremitting opposition to the court. This mark is by no means infallible. Patriotism is not necessarily included in rebellion. A man may hate his king, yet not love his country.
Samuel Johnson
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The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.
Samuel Johnson
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A vow is a snare for sin
Samuel Johnson
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In life's last scene what prodigies surprise, Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise! From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow, And Swift expires a driveller and a show.
Samuel Johnson
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Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his home town: yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life and as nothing is little to him that feels it with gre
Samuel Johnson
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Fears of the brave and follies of the wise.
Samuel Johnson
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Study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves
Samuel Johnson