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Let him go abroad to a distant country let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.

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
Place
Country
Abroad
Distant
Devil
Known
Evil

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Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression we must always purpose to do more or better than in time past.
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I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to he right.
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Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim and when you are calculating, calculate.
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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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Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new.
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Security will produce danger.
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Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other.
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If we will have the kindness of others, we must endure their follies.
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Men become friends by a community of pleasures.
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The friendship which is to be practised or expected by common mortals, must take its rise from mutual pleasure, and must end when the power ceases of delighting each other.
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Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle for the calamities of life, like the necessities of Nature, are calls to labor and diligence.
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There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.
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The mischief of flattery is, not that it persuades any man that he is what he is not, but that it suppresses the influence of honest ambition, by raising an opinion that honour may be gained without the toil of merit.
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Pour forth thy fervors for a healthful mind, Obedient passions, and a will resigned
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Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject.
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The fiction of happiness is propagated by every tongue and confirmed by every look till at last all profess the joy which they do not feel and consent to yield to the general delusion.
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He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.
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Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world.
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Year chases year, decay pursues decay, Still drops some joy from with'ring life away New forms arise, and diff'rent views engage
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An Englishman is content to say nothing when he has nothing to say.
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