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Composition is for the most part an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
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Necessity
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
The richest author that ever grazed the common of literature.
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I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.
Samuel Johnson
It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.
Samuel Johnson
Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.
Samuel Johnson
As a madman is apt to think himself grown suddenly great, so he that grows suddenly great is apt to borrow a little from the madman.
Samuel Johnson
He that resigns his peace to little casualties, and suffers the course of his life to be interrupted for fortuitous inadvertencies or offences, delivers up himself to the direction of the wind, and loses all that constancy and equanimity which constitutes the chief praise of a wise man.
Samuel Johnson
Some people wave their dogmatic thinking until their own reason is entangled.
Samuel Johnson
The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind.
Samuel Johnson
It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous.
Samuel Johnson
Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience you will find it a calamity.
Samuel Johnson
Pound St. Paul's Church into atoms, and consider any single atom it is to be sure, good for nothing but put all these atoms together, and you have St. Paul's Church. So it is with human felicity, which is made up of many ingredients, each of which may be shown to be very insignificant.
Samuel Johnson
He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.
Samuel Johnson
The civilities of the great are never thrown away.
Samuel Johnson
A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.
Samuel Johnson
He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.
Samuel Johnson
The mere power of saving what is already in our hands must be of easy acquisition to every mind and as the example of Lord Bacon may show that the highest intellect cannot safely neglect it, a thousand instances every day prove that the humblest may practise it with success.
Samuel Johnson
Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
Samuel Johnson
Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God.
Samuel Johnson
To build is to be robbed.
Samuel Johnson
The uniform necessities of human nature produce in a great measure uniformity of life, and for part of the day make one place like another to dress and to undress, to eat and to sleep, are the same in London as in the country.
Samuel Johnson
