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As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
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Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world.
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It is generally agreed, that few men are made better by affluence or exaltation.
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Nothing has tended more to retard the advancement of science than the disposition in vulgar minds to vilify what they cannot comprehend.
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They who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it.
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Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
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I believe it will be found that those who marry late are best pleased with their children and those who marry early, with their partners.
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Language is the dress of thought and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy
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He that pines with hunger, is in little care how others shall be fed. The poor man is seldom studious to make his grandson rich.
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The equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.
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Those authors are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence.
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Much is due to those who first broke the way to knowledge, and left only to their successors the task of smoothing it.
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He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel.
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Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.
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Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves.
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The faults of a writer of acknowledged excellence are more dangerous, because the influence of his example is more extensive and the interest of learning requires that they should be discovered and stigmatized, before they have the sanction of antiquity conferred upon them, and become precedents of indisputable authority.
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If in an actor there appears an utter vacancy of meaning, a frigid equality, a stupid languor, a torpid apathy, the greatest kindness that can be shown him is a speedy sentence of expulsion.
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We often need reminding even if we do not often need educating.
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Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience you will find it a calamity.
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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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