Quote

In my early years I read very hard. It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as much at eighteen as I do now.

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
Read
True
Book
Hard
Eighteen
Much
Reflection
Years
Early
Knew
Almost

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A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge.
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The most useful truths are always universal, and unconnected with accidents and customs.
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A fallible being will fail somewhere.
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How small of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Still to ourselves in every place consigned, Our own felicity we make or find. With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.
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I do not see, Sir, that it is reasonable for a man to be angry at another, whom a woman has preferred to him but angry he is, no doubt and he is loath to be angry at himself.
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No man likes to live under the eye of perpetual disapprobation.
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The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.
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Of many, imagined blessings it may be doubted whether he that wants or possesses them had more reason to be satisfied with his lot.
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Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne judgment and friendship are like being enlivened.
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Nothing can be truly great which is not right.
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Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without any tears.
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It is to be steadily inculcated, that virtue is the highest proof of understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness.
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The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy their real faults are immediately detected and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an individual weight of calumny will be super-added.
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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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Friendship may well deserve the sacrifice of pleasure, though not of conscience.
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Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties.
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Our minds should not be empty because if they are not preoccupied by good, evil will break in upon them.
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It is a hopeless endeavour to unite the contrarieties of spring and winter it is unjust to claim the privileges of age, and retain the play-things of childhood.
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Though the discoveries or acquisitions of man are not always adequate to the expectations of his pride, they are at least sufficient to animate his industry.
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Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity but art and nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects, and every moment produces something new to him who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation.
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