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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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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
Represent
Unpleasing
Affair
Shew
Necessary
Disadvantage
Evil
Disadvantages
Desire
Evils
Removed
Patriot
Affairs

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Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disciplined by an easy separation...to die is the fate of man but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.
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Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.
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Rash oaths, whether kept or broken, frequently produce guilt.
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Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new.
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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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Poetry cannot be translation
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Diffidence may check resolution and obstruct performance, but compensates its embarrassments by more important advantages it conciliates the proud, and softens the severe averts envy from excellence, and censure from miscarriage.
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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 mind is seldom quickened to very vigorous operations but by pain, or the dread of pain. We do not disturb ourselves with the detection of fallacies which do us no harm.
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Yet reason frowns in war's unequal game, Where wasted nations raise a single name And mortgag'd states their grandsire's wreaths regret, From age to age in everlasting debt Wreaths which at last the dear-bought right convey To rust on medals, or on stones decay.
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Men have been wise in many different modes but they have always laughed the same way.
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How small of all that human hearts endure/That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.
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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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A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.
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There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance.
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Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God.
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[The poet] must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place.
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Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.
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I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.
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Claret is the liquor for boys port for men but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.
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