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This is my history like all other histories, a narrative of misery.

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
Misery
History
Like
Histories
Narrative

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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Wise married women don't trouble themselves about infidelity in their husbands.
Samuel Johnson
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When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Samuel Johnson
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Then with no throbs of fiery pain, No cold gradations of decay, Death broke at once the vital chain, And freed his soul the nearest way.
Samuel Johnson
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Justice is indispensably and universally necessary, and what is necessary must always be limited, uniform, and distinct
Samuel Johnson
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All envy is proportionate to desire we are uneasy at the attainments of another, according as we think our own happiness would be advanced by the addition of that which he withholds from us.
Samuel Johnson
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A soldier's time is passed in distress and danger, or in idleness and corruption.
Samuel Johnson
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In life's last scene what prodigies surprise, Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise! From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow, And Swift expires a driveller and a show.
Samuel Johnson
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I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.
Samuel Johnson
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Happiness is enjoyed only in proportion as it is known and such is the state or folly of man, that it is known only by experience of its contrary.
Samuel Johnson
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Read the book you do honestly feel a wish and curiosity to read.
Samuel Johnson
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Commerce can never be at a stop while one man wants what another can supply and credit will never be denied, while it is likely to be repaid with profit.
Samuel Johnson
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Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.
Samuel Johnson
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How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?
Samuel Johnson
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Memory is like all other human powers, with which no man can be satisfied who measures them by what he can conceive, or by what he can desire.
Samuel Johnson
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Golf is a game in which you claim the privileges of age, and retain the playthings of childhood.
Samuel Johnson
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The business of a poet is to examine not the individual but the species to remark general properties and large appearances.
Samuel Johnson
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Hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain.
Samuel Johnson
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There must always be some advantage on one side or the other, and it is better that advantage should be had by talents than by chance.
Samuel Johnson
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To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
Samuel Johnson
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It is man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.
Samuel Johnson