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It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.

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
Made
Calculations
Mind
Employed
Profession
Wonderful
Actually
Littles
Little
Calculation
Work
Discharge

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Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is expected is already destroyed.
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Present opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages.
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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.
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No man should attempt to teach others what he has never learned himself
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You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money to those who work, as the recompense of their labor, than when you give money merely in charity.
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A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.
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Whatever you have spend less.
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Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.
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Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
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Those authors who would find many readers, must endeavour to please while they instruct.
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No man can enjoy happiness without thinking that he enjoys it.
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What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.
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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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The most useful truths are always universal, and unconnected with accidents and customs.
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The Church does not superstitiously observe days, merely as days, but as memorials of important facts. Christmas might be kept as well upon one day of the year as another but there should be a stated day for commemorating the birth of our Saviour, because there is danger that what may be done on any day, will be neglected.
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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.
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To love their country has been considered as virtue in men, whose love could not be otherwise than blind, because their preference was made without, a comparison but it has never been my fortune to find, either in ancient or modern writers, any honourable mention of those, who have, with equal blindness, hated their country.
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All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance.
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His virtues walked their narrow round, Nor made a pause, nor left a void And sure the Eternal Master found The single talent well employed.
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