Quote

Of all the griefs that harass the distress'd, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart, Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart.

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
Deep
Distress
Sure
Insult
Scornful
Heart
Points
Blockhead
Never
Wounds
Harass
Generous
Dart
Bitter
Blockheads
Grief
Griefs
Fate
Jest

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These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes.
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He left the name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale.
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Let me rejoice in the light which Thou hast imparted let me serve Thee with active zeal, humbled confidence, and wait with patient expectation for the time in which the soul which Thou receivest shall be satisfied with knowledge.
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Faults and defects every work of man must have.
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Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.
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The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
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No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.
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Try and forget our cares and sickness, and contribute, as we can to the happiness of each other.
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In civilized society external advantages make us more respected. A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one. You may analyze this and say, What is there in it? But that will avail you nothing, for it is a part of a general system.
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The poor and the busy have no leisure for sentimental sorrow.
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Was ever poet so trusted before?
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He that voluntarily continues in ignorance, is guilty of all the crimes which ignorance produces.
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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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Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.
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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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Shakespeare never had more than 6 lines together without a fault.
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Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.
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A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
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The parallel circumstances and kindred images to which we readily conform our minds are, above all other writings, to be found in the lives of particular persons, and therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography.
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The violence of war admits no distinction the lance, that is lifted at guilt and power, will sometimes fall on innocence and gentleness.
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