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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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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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We are more pained by ignorance than delighted by instruction.
Samuel Johnson
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Our senses, our appetite, and our passions are our lawful and faithful guides in things that relate solely to this life.
Samuel Johnson
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In a man's letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.
Samuel Johnson
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To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.
Samuel Johnson
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Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it
Samuel Johnson
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It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.
Samuel Johnson
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It is unpleasing to represent our affairs to our own disadvantage yet it is necessary to shew the evils which we desire to be removed.
Samuel Johnson
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Sleep undisturbed within this peaceful shrine, Till angels wake thee with a note like thine.
Samuel Johnson
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No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius.
Samuel Johnson
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Attainment is followed by neglect, possession by disgust, and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to many another course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last
Samuel Johnson
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Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding can expect only to improve a single science.
Samuel Johnson
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Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty.
Samuel Johnson
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One of the most pernicious effects of haste is obscurity.
Samuel Johnson
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A writer who obtains his full purpose loses himself in his own lustre.
Samuel Johnson
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I am willing to love all of mankind, except an American.
Samuel Johnson
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Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is but it is not easy to tell what it is.
Samuel Johnson
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Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne judgment and friendship are like being enlivened.
Samuel Johnson
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Still we love The evil we do, until we suffer it.
Samuel Johnson
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A blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another.
Samuel Johnson
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Many leave the labours of half their life to their executors and to chance, because they will not send them abroad unfinished, and are unable to finish them, having prescribed to themselves such a degree of exactness as human diligence can scarcely ontain.
Samuel Johnson