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A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Literary Critic
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Country
Laws
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Thousand
Ought
Interpose
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Occur
Cannot
Provide
States
Prison
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
That friendship may be at once fond and lasting, there must not only be equal virtue on each part, but virtue of the same kind not only the same end must be proposed, but the same means must be approved by both.
Samuel Johnson
A small country town is not the place in which one would choose to quarrel with a wife every human being in such places is a spy.
Samuel Johnson
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.
Samuel Johnson
One of the aged greatest miseries is that they cannot easily find a companion able to share the memories of the past.
Samuel Johnson
With what hope can we endeavor to persuade the ladies that the time spent at the toilet is lost in vanity.
Samuel Johnson
Terrestrial happiness is of short duration. The brightness of the flame is wasting its fuel the fragrant flower is passing away in its own odors.
Samuel Johnson
To excite opposition and inflame malevolence is the unhappy privilege of courage made arrogant by consciousness of strength.
Samuel Johnson
It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous.
Samuel Johnson
An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty.
Samuel Johnson
You never find people laboring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful income.
Samuel Johnson
We have now learned that rashness and imprudence will not be deterred from taking credit let us try whether fraud and avarice may be more easily restrained from giving it.
Samuel Johnson
Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.
Samuel Johnson
Revenge is an act of passion vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged crimes are avenged.
Samuel Johnson
Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use.
Samuel Johnson
A soldier's time is passed in distress and danger, or in idleness and corruption.
Samuel Johnson
Advice is seldom welcome. Those who need it most, like it least.
Samuel Johnson
You cannot give me an instance of any man who is permitted to lay out his own time contriving not to have tedious hours.
Samuel Johnson
He that resigns his peace to little casualties, and suffers the course of his life to be interrupted for fortuitous inadvertencies or offences, delivers up himself to the direction of the wind, and loses all that constancy and equanimity which constitutes the chief praise of a wise man.
Samuel Johnson
Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order. - John V. Lindsay No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.
Samuel Johnson
The desires of man increase with his acquisitions.
Samuel Johnson
