Quote

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.

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
Ears
Lying
Whether
Eye
Tell
Deceit
Deception

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There are, indeed, few kinds of composition from which an author, however learned or ingenious, can hope a long continuance of fame.
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Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.
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The poor and the busy have no leisure for sentimental sorrow.
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Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding.
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Do not ... hope wholly to reason away your troubles do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind.
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Every man may be observed to have a certain strain of lamentation, some peculiar theme of complaint on which he dwells in his moments of dejection.
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As long as one lives he will have need of repentance.
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Nothing is more common than for men to make partial and absurd distinctions between vices of equal enormity, and to observe some of the divine commands with great scrupulousness, while they violate others, equally important, without any concern, or the least apparent conciousness of guilt. Alas, it is only wisdom which perceives this tragedy.
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Learn that the present hour alone is man's.
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We have now learned that rashness and imprudence will not be deterred from taking credit let us try whether fraud and avarice may be more easily restrained from giving it.
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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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Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.
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Was ever poet so trusted before?
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Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression we must always purpose to do more or better than in time past.
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A successful author is equally in danger of the diminution of his fame, whether he continues or ceases to write.
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Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religions hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper and deeper.
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A cow is a very good animal in the field but we turn her out of a garden.
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In misery's darkest cavern known, His useful care was ever nigh Where hopeless anguish pour'd his groan, And lonely want retir'd to die.
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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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When a man feel the reprehension of a friend seconded by his own heart, he is easily heated into resentment.
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