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A man is not obliged honestly to answer a question which should not properly be put.

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
Properly
Honestly
Answer
Advice
Question
Answers
Men
Life
Obliged

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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The care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature.
Samuel Johnson
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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.
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I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.
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Security will produce danger.
Samuel Johnson
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A man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice.
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I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.
Samuel Johnson
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Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?
Samuel Johnson
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Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience you will find it a calamity.
Samuel Johnson
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There must always be some advantage on one side or the other, and it is better that advantage should be had by talents than by chance.
Samuel Johnson
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The faults of a writer of acknowledged excellence are more dangerous, because the influence of his example is more extensive and the interest of learning requires that they should be discovered and stigmatized, before they have the sanction of antiquity conferred upon them, and become precedents of indisputable authority.
Samuel Johnson
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We have now learned that rashness and imprudence will not be deterred from taking credit let us try whether fraud and avarice may be more easily restrained from giving it.
Samuel Johnson
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Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.
Samuel Johnson
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All envy is proportionate to desire we are uneasy at the attainments of another, according as we think our own happiness would be advanced by the addition of that which he withholds from us.
Samuel Johnson
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I do not see, Sir, that it is reasonable for a man to be angry at another, whom a woman has preferred to him but angry he is, no doubt and he is loath to be angry at himself.
Samuel Johnson
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Critics, like the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest.
Samuel Johnson
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The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
Samuel Johnson
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He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience. We have always protected the Americans we may therefore subject them to government.
Samuel Johnson
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Those who will not take the trouble to think for themselves, have always somebody that thinks for them and the difficulty in writing is to please those from whom others learn to be pleased.
Samuel Johnson
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I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.
Samuel Johnson
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No man hates him at whom he can laugh.
Samuel Johnson