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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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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.
Samuel Johnson
Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.
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Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.
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It is wonderful what a difference learning makes upon people even in the common intercourse of life, which does not appear to be much connected with it.
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When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.
Samuel Johnson
How gloomy would be the mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he should never die: that what now acts shall continue its agency, and what now thinks shall think on forever!
Samuel Johnson
Much is due to those who first broke the way to knowledge, and left only to their successors the task of smoothing it.
Samuel Johnson
Life, however short, is made still shorter by waste of time.
Samuel Johnson
Nothing is more common than for men to make partial and absurd distinctions between vices of equal enormity, and to observe some of the divine commands with great scrupulousness, while they violate others, equally important, without any concern, or the least apparent conciousness of guilt. Alas, it is only wisdom which perceives this tragedy.
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In my early years I read very hard. It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as much at eighteen as I do now.
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No man hates him at whom he can laugh.
Samuel Johnson
Long customs are not easily broken he that attempts to change the course of his own life very often labors in vain and how shall we do that for others, which we are seldom able to do for ourselves.
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A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, And touched nothing that he did not adorn.
Samuel Johnson
The time will come to every human being when it must be known how well he can bear to die.
Samuel Johnson
The seeds of knowledge may be planted in solitude, but must be cultivated in public.
Samuel Johnson
No man sympathizes with the sorrows of vanity.
Samuel Johnson
The business of life summons us away from useless grief, and calls us to the exercise of those virtues of which we are lamenting our deprivation.
Samuel Johnson
Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding.
Samuel Johnson
Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.
Samuel Johnson
A continual feast of commendation is only to be obtained by merit or by wealth: many are therefore obliged to content themselves with single morsels, and recompense the infrequency of their enjoyment by excess and riot, whenever fortune sets the banquet before them.
Samuel Johnson
