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Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim and when you are calculating, calculate.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Madam
Calculate
Calculating
Sincerity
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Riches seldom make their owners rich.
Samuel Johnson
The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, were exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue.
Samuel Johnson
Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet.
Samuel Johnson
To scatter praise or blame without regard to justice is to destroy the distinction of good and evil. Many have no other test of actions than general opinion and all are so far influenced by a sense of reputation that they are often restrained by fear of reproach, and excited by hope of honour, when other principles have lost their power.
Samuel Johnson
How small of all that human hearts endure/That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.
Samuel Johnson
The difference between coarse and refined abuse is the difference between being bruised by a club and wounded by a poisoned arrow.
Samuel Johnson
Learn the leading precognita of all things-no need to turn over leaf by leaf, but grasp the trunk hard and you will shake all the branches. Advice cherished by Samuel Johnson that that, if one is to master any subject, one must first discover its general principles.
Samuel Johnson
Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without any tears.
Samuel Johnson
How gloomy would be the mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he should never die: that what now acts shall continue its agency, and what now thinks shall think on forever!
Samuel Johnson
Don't tell me of deception a lie is a lie, whether it be a lie to the eye or a lie to the ear.
Samuel Johnson
We may have many acquaintances, but we can have but few friends this made Aristotle say that he that hath many friends hath none.
Samuel Johnson
Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.
Samuel Johnson
There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.
Samuel Johnson
Terrestrial happiness is of short duration. The brightness of the flame is wasting its fuel the fragrant flower is passing away in its own odors.
Samuel Johnson
To set the mind above the appetites is the end of abstinence, which one of the Fathers observes to be not a virtue, but the groundwork of virtue.
Samuel Johnson
But to the particular species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some early conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and emulation.
Samuel Johnson
Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause a while from learning to be wise. There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,- Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.
Samuel Johnson
Round numbers are always false.
Samuel Johnson
No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.... There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government.
Samuel Johnson
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
