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A mere literary man is a dull man a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.

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
Selfish
Mere
Respectability
Respect
Solely
Literature
Respectable
United
Commerce
Business
Literary
Make
Men
Dull

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Yet reason frowns in war's unequal game, Where wasted nations raise a single name And mortgag'd states their grandsire's wreaths regret, From age to age in everlasting debt Wreaths which at last the dear-bought right convey To rust on medals, or on stones decay.
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Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.
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There are certain topicks which are never exhausted. Of some images and sentiments the mind of man may be said to be enamoured it meets them, however often they occur, with the same ardour which a lover feels at the sight of his mistress, and parts from them with the same regret when they can no longer be enjoyed.
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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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Wine gives great pleasure, and every pleasure is of itself a good. and A man should cultivate his mind so as to have that confidence and readiness without wine, which wine gives.
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About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right.
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A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.
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To proportion the eagerness of contest to its importance seems too hard a task for human wisdom. The pride of wit has kept ages busy in the discussion of useless questions, and the pride of power has destroyed armies, to gain or to keep unprofitable possessions.
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It is much easier not to write like a man than to write like a woman.
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Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.
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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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As any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice.
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Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
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Ignorance cannot always be inferred from inaccuracy knowledge is not always present.
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Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.
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Attention and respect give pleasure, however late, or however useless. But they are not useless, when they are late, it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.
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Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause a while from learning to be wise. There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,- Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.
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Few of those who fill the world with books, have any pretensions to the hope either of pleasing or instructing. They have often no other task than to lay two books before them, out of which they compile a third, without any new material of their own, and with very little application of judgment to those which former authors have supplied.
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Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.
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Self-love is a busy prompter.
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