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There ambush here relentless ruffians lay, And here the fell attorney prowls for prey.

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
Attorney
Relentless
Prey
Fell
Lays
Law
Ruffian
Ambush

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Credulity is the common failing of inexperienced virtue and he who is spontaneously suspicious may justly be charged with radical corruption.
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When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.
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So different are the colors of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.
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Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotsman to draw the trigger at his death.
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Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
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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.
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He that voluntarily continues in ignorance, is guilty of all the crimes which ignorance produces.
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It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.
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Any of us would kill a cow rather than not have beef.
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I do not see, Sir, that it is reasonable for a man to be angry at another, whom a woman has preferred to him but angry he is, no doubt and he is loath to be angry at himself.
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We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor
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The misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated.
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Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing.
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There is nothing so minute, or inconsiderable, that I would not rather know it than not.
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Exert your talents, and distinguish yourself, and don't think of retiring from the world, until the world will be sorry that you retire.
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I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.
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We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide.
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What is twice read is commonly better remembered that what is transcribed.
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People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to amuse them.
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The maxim of Cleobulus, Mediocrity is best, has been long considered a universal principle, extending through the whole compass of life and nature. The experience of every age seems to have given it new confirmation, and to show that nothing, however specious or alluring, is pursued with propriety or enjoyed with safety beyond certain limits.
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