Quote

He to whom many objects of pursuit arise at the same time, will frequently hesitate between different desires till a rival has precluded him, or change his course as new attractions prevail, and harass himself without advancing.

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
Without
Till
Hesitate
Many
Pursuit
Advancing
Different
Objects
Prevail
Time
Focus
Rivals
Courses
Frequently
Precluded
Course
Attraction
Harass
Desire
Desires
Attractions
Change
Arise
Rival

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I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.
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Whatever is formed for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity.
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Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.
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The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
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I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom.
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Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive for a man may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent qualities as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight.
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Truth allows no choice.
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Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal.
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A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge.
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Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. Every advance into knowledge opens new prospects, and produces new incitements to farther progress.
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Truth has no gradations nothing which admits of increase can be so much what it is, as truth is truth. There may be a strange thing, and a thing more strange. But if a proposition be true, there can be none more true.
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Among the numerous stratagems by which pride endeavors to recommend folly to regard, there is scarcely one that meets with less success than affectation, or a perpetual disguise of the real character by fictitious appearances.
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No one will persist long in helping someone who will not help themselves.
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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.
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Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religions hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper and deeper.
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Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves.
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Nothing is more common than to find men, whose works are now totally neglected, mentioned with praises by their contemporaries as the oracles of their age, and the legislators of science.
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To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude it is not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
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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.
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As pride sometimes is hid under humility, idleness if often covered by turbulence and hurry.
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