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A blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another.

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
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
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Always
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The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind.
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Vulgar and inactive minds confound familiarity with knowledge, and conceive themselves informed of the whole nature of things, when they are shown their form or told their use.
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I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom.
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The difference between coarse and refined abuse is the difference between being bruised by a club and wounded by a poisoned arrow.
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The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.
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Don't tell me of deception a lie is a lie, whether it be a lie to the eye or a lie to the ear.
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Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.
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You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.
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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.
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He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
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Condemned to Hope's delusive mine, As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blasts or slow decline Our social comforts drop away.
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Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding.
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This world, where much is to be done and little to be known.
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Evil is uncertain in the same degree as good, and for the reason that we ought not to hope too securely, we ought not to fear with to much dejection.
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Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.
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Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.
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In all pleasures hope is a considerable part.
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Pension: An allowance made to anyone without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.
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Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
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