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There is a certain degree of temptation which will overcome any virtue. Now, in so far as you approach temptation to a man, you do him an injury and, if he is overcome, you share his guilt.

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
Share
Overcome
Certain
Temptation
Men
Overcoming
Guilt
Degree
Degrees
Approach
Virtue
Injury

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Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured.
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Happiness, said he, must be something solid and permanent, without fear and without uncertainty.
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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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The heroes of literary history have been no less remarkable for what they have suffered than for what they have achieved.
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We consider ourselves as defective in memory, either because we remember less than we desire, or less than we suppose others to remember.
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Read the book you do honestly feel a wish and curiosity to read.
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No one will persist long in helping someone who will not help themselves.
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Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.
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As the faculty of writing has chiefly been a masculine endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has always been thrown upon the women.
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Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning.
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Few things are so liberally bestowed, or squandered with so little effect, as good advice.
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Life of Ages, richly poured, Love of God unspent and free, Flowing in the Prophet's word And the People's liberty! Never was to chosen race That unstinted tide confined Thine is every time and place, Fountain sweet of heart and mind!
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Cruel with guilt, and daring with despair, the midnight murderer bursts the faithless bar invades the sacred hour of silent rest and leaves, unseen, a dagger in your breast.
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When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
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What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
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A voyage to the moon, however romantick and absurd the scheme may now appear, since the properties of air have been better understood, seemed highly probable to many of the aspiring wits in the last century
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I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.
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It is much easier not to write like a man than to write like a woman.
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The balls of sight are so formed, that one man's eyes are spectacles to another, to read his heart with.
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