Quote

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree. We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

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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Translator
Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Wells
Manage
Firsts
Nine
Manages
Well
Draws
Inclined
First
Except
Deceived
Believe
Months
Affairs
Never
Trust
Affair
Men
Tree
Breath
Feelings
Breaths

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Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle for the calamities of life, like the necessities of Nature, are calls to labor and diligence.
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We may have uneasy feelings for seeing a creature in distress without pity for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them.
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Men are like stone jugs - you may lug them where you like by the ears.
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No man should attempt to teach others what he has never learned himself
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What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.
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Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.
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That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.
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Assertion is not argument to contradict the statement of an opponent is not proof that you are correct.
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Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject.
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There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.
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It is unpleasing to represent our affairs to our own disadvantage yet it is necessary to shew the evils which we desire to be removed.
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Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance.
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It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.
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Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
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Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order. - John V. Lindsay No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.
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Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.
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I have adopted the Roman sentiment, that it is more honorable to save a citizen than to kill an enemy.
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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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A man finds in the productions of nature an inexhaustible stock of material on which he can employ himself, without any temptations to envy or malevolence, and has always a certain prospect of discovering new reasons for adoring the sovereign author of the universe.
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Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world.
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