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There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth. It is apparent that men can be social beings no longer than they believe each other. When speech is employed only as the vehicle of falsehood, every man must disunite himself from others, inhabit his own cave and seek prey only for himself.

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
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Believe
Crime
Violation
Men
Longer
Prey
Society
Falsehood
Social
Employed
Infamous
Others
Vehicle
Inhabit
Truth
Seek
Cave
Must
Speech
Caves
Every
Beings
Apparent

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Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity but art and nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects, and every moment produces something new to him who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation.
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Profuseness is a cruel and crafty demon, that gradually involves her followers in dependence and debt that is, fetters them with irons that enter into their souls.
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Turn on the prudent Ant, thy heedful eyes, Observe her labours, Sluggard, and be wise.
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No one ever became great by imitation.
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Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent.
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Every man, however hopeless his pretensions may appear, has some project by which he hopes to rise to reputation some art by which he imagines that the attention of the world will be attracted some quality, good or bad, which discriminates him from the common herd of mortals, and by which others may be persuaded to love, or compelled to fear him.
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Whatever professes to benefit by pleasing must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply something sudden and unexpected that which elevates must always surprise.
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Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.
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As the faculty of writing has chiefly been a masculine endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has always been thrown upon the women.
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A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.
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If a man is in doubt whether it would be better for him to expose himself to martyrdom or not, he should not do it. He must be convinced that he has a delegation from heaven.
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Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
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He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.
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Babies do not want to hear about babies they like to be told of giants and castles.
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People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to amuse them.
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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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