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Most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Bookseller
Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
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Mould
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Domestic discord is not inevitably and fatally necessary but yet it is not easy to avoid.
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A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, And touched nothing that he did not adorn.
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Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.
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A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.
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A successful author is equally in danger of the diminution of his fame, whether he continues or ceases to write.
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Age is rarely despised but when it is, contemptible.
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The end of writing is to instruct the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing.
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Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.
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The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
Samuel Johnson
As to the rout that is made about people who are ruined by extravagance, it is no matter to the nation that some individuals suffer. When so much general productive exertion is the consequence of luxury, the nation does not care though there are debtors nay, they would not care though their creditors were there too.
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Revenge is an act of passion vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged crimes are avenged.
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The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
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Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
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None are happy but by anticipation of change.
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There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.
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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.
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In questions of law or of fact conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him the rights of another man they must be known by rational investigation or historical inquiry.
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Languages are the pedigree of nations.
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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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Any of us would kill a cow rather than not have beef.
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