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When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, Distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Prudence
Distrust
Cowardice
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
In the condition of men, it frequently happens that grief and anxiety lie hid under the golden robes of prosperity and the gloom of calamity is cheered by secret radiations of hope and comfort as in the works of nature, the bog is sometimes covered with flowers, and the mine concealed in the barren crags.
Samuel Johnson
If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.
Samuel Johnson
It is astonishing that any man can forbear enquiring seriously whether there is a God whether God is just whether this life is the only state of existence.
Samuel Johnson
Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance.
Samuel Johnson
It is the just doom of laziness and gluttony to be inactive without ease and drowsy without tranquility.
Samuel Johnson
We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures
Samuel Johnson
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.
Samuel Johnson
What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.
Samuel Johnson
As to the rout that is made about people who are ruined by extravagance, it is no matter to the nation that some individuals suffer. When so much general productive exertion is the consequence of luxury, the nation does not care though there are debtors nay, they would not care though their creditors were there too.
Samuel Johnson
Celestial wisdom calms the mind.
Samuel Johnson
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Samuel Johnson
Expectation improperly indulged in must end in disappointment.
Samuel Johnson
Unintelligible language is a lantern without a light.
Samuel Johnson
Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject.
Samuel Johnson
One of the amusements of idleness is reading without fatigue of close attention and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read.
Samuel Johnson
How can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false? Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives
Samuel Johnson
High people, sir, are the best take a hundred ladies of quality, you'll find them better wives, better mothers, more willing to sacrifice their own pleasures to their children, than a hundred other woman.
Samuel Johnson
The main of life is composed of small incidents and petty occurrences of wishes for objects not remote, and grief for disappointments of no fatal consequence.
Samuel Johnson
As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles.
Samuel Johnson
All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance.
Samuel Johnson
