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Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy.

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
Burden
Necessary
Villainy
Hypocrisy

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The eye of the mind, like that of the body, can only extend its view to new objects, by losing sight of those which are now before it.
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He that wishes to see his country robbed of its rights cannot be a patriot.
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Who left nothing of authorship untouched, and touched nothing which he did not adorn. [Lat., Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.]
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Profuseness is a cruel and crafty demon, that gradually involves her followers in dependence and debt that is, fetters them with irons that enter into their souls.
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Pope had been flattered till he thought himself one of the moving powers of the system of life. When he talked of laying down his pen, those who sat round him intreated and implored and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that they went away and laughed.
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There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets.
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My dear friend, clear your mind of can't.
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In order that all men might be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
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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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There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.
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There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
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Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable.
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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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Few of those who fill the world with books, have any pretensions to the hope either of pleasing or instructing. They have often no other task than to lay two books before them, out of which they compile a third, without any new material of their own, and with very little application of judgment to those which former authors have supplied.
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Such is the constitution of man that labour may be styled its own reward nor will any external incitements be requisite, if it be considered how much happiness is gained, and how much misery escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body.
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Greece appears to be the fountain of knowledge Rome of elegance
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Liberty is the parent of truth, but truth and decency are sometimes at variance. All men and all propositions are to be treated here as they deserve, and there are many who have no claim either to respect or decency.
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I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to he right.
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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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Inquiries into the heart are not for man.
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