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Levellers wish to level down as far as themselves but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.
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
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Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Bear
Bears
Level
Levels
Wish
Cannot
Levelling
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Care that is once enter'd into the breast Will have the whole possession ere it rest.
Samuel Johnson
Every other author may aspire to praise the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.
Samuel Johnson
Large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most common topics of falsehood.
Samuel Johnson
To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.
Samuel Johnson
Words become low by the occasions to which they are applied, or the general character of them who use them and the disgust which they produce arises from the revival of those images with which they are commonly united.
Samuel Johnson
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
To talk in public, to think in solitude, to read and to hear, to inquire and answer inquiries, is the business of the scholar
Samuel Johnson
Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.
Samuel Johnson
Life, however short, is made still shorter by waste of time.
Samuel Johnson
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
Samuel Johnson
To be of no Church is dangerous.
Samuel Johnson
To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence--an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.
Samuel Johnson
The present time is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.
Samuel Johnson
Shakespeare never had six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven, but this does not refute my general assertion.
Samuel Johnson
Gaiety is to good-humor as animal perfumes to vegetable fragrance. The one overpowers weak spirits, the other recreates and revives them. Gaiety seldom fails to give some pain good-humor boasts no faculties which every one does not believe in his own power, and pleases principally by not offending.
Samuel Johnson
Flattery pleases very generally. In the first place, the flatterer may think what he says to be true but, in the second place, whether he thinks so or not, he certainly thinks those whom he flatters of consequence enough to be flattered.
Samuel Johnson
Consider what importance to society the chastity of women is. Upon that all the property in the world depends. We hang a thief for stealing a sheep but the unchastity of a woman transfers sheep and farm and all from the right owner.
Samuel Johnson
Since life itself is uncertain, nothing which has life for its basis can boast much stability.
Samuel Johnson
He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.
Samuel Johnson
People may be taken in once, who imagine that an author is greater in private life than other men.
Samuel Johnson
