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All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance.

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
Novelty
Effect
Ignorance
Effects
Wonder

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The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
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Condemned to Hope's delusive mine, As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blasts or slow decline Our social comforts drop away.
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If I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him.
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Of the present state, whatever it be, we feel and are forced to confess the misery yet when the same state is again at a distance, imagination paints it as desirable.
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The mere power of saving what is already in our hands must be of easy acquisition to every mind and as the example of Lord Bacon may show that the highest intellect cannot safely neglect it, a thousand instances every day prove that the humblest may practise it with success.
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Remember that nothing will supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity long continued will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible.
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Pain is less subject than pleasure to careless expression.
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The drama's laws the drama's patrons give. For we that live to please must please to live.
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You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe.
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I would advise you, Sir, to study algebra, if you are not an adept already in it: your head would get less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbours about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow.
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The Irish are a fair people: They never speak well of one another.
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An Englishman is content to say nothing when he has nothing to say.
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Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance.
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I am a friend to subordination, as most conducive to the happiness of society. There is a reciprocal pleasure in governing and being governed.
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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.
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Advice is offensive, it shows us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves.
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There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse.
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A book should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it.
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To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
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I will take no more physick, not even my opiates for I have prayed that I may render up my soul to God unclouded.
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