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To fix the thoughts by writing, and subject them to frequent examinations and reviews, is the best method of enabling the mind to detect its own sophisms, and keep it on guard against the fallacies which it practices on others
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
None are happy but by anticipation of change.
Samuel Johnson
The mental disease of the present generation is impatience of study, contempt of the great masters of ancient wisdom, and a disposition to rely wholly upon unassisted genius and natural sagacity.
Samuel Johnson
You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe.
Samuel Johnson
I look upon this as I did upon the Dictionary: it is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.
Samuel Johnson
Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
Samuel Johnson
Happiness is enjoyed only in proportion as it is known and such is the state or folly of man, that it is known only by experience of its contrary.
Samuel Johnson
Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.
Samuel Johnson
It is astonishing that any man can forbear enquiring seriously whether there is a God whether God is just whether this life is the only state of existence.
Samuel Johnson
It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination.
Samuel Johnson
In civilized society external advantages make us more respected. A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one. You may analyze this and say, What is there in it? But that will avail you nothing, for it is a part of a general system.
Samuel Johnson
Of those that spin out trifles and die without a memorial, many flatter themselves with high opinions of their own importance, and imagine that they are every day adding some improvement to human life.
Samuel Johnson
Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.
Samuel Johnson
The whole power of cunning is privative to say nothing, and to do nothing , is the utmost of its reach. Yet men, thus narrow by nature and mean by art, are sometimes able to rise by the miscarriages of bravery and the openness of integrity, and, watching failures and snatching opportunities, obtain advantages which belong to higher characters.
Samuel Johnson
Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.
Samuel Johnson
Life protracted is protracted woe.
Samuel Johnson
He that never labors may know the pains of idleness, but not the pleasures.
Samuel Johnson
Misery is caused for the most part, not by a heavy crush of disaster, but by the corrosion of less visible evils, which canker enjoyment, and undermine security. The visit of an invader is necessarily rare, but domestic animosities allow no cessation.
Samuel Johnson
Nothing has tended more to retard the advancement of science than the disposition in vulgar minds to vilify what they cannot comprehend.
Samuel Johnson
They who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it.
Samuel Johnson
A man who always talks for fame never can be pleasing. The man who talks to unburthen his mind is the man to delight you.
Samuel Johnson
