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Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.

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
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Night
Volume
Give
Wishes
Addison
Must
Whoever
Ostentatious
Giving
Familiar
Volumes
English
Coarse
Style
Elegant
Days
Attain
Wish
Nights

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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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Occupation alone is happiness.
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The richest author that ever grazed the common of literature.
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Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.
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A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, And touched nothing that he did not adorn.
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One of the aged greatest miseries is that they cannot easily find a companion able to share the memories of the past.
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New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.
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Much is due to those who first broke the way to knowledge, and left only to their successors the task of smoothing it.
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It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.
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Luxury, so far as it reaches the people, will do good to the race of people it will strengthen and multiply them. Sir, no nation was ever hurt by luxury for, as I said before it can reach but a very few.
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A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.
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Nature never gives everything at once.
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Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disciplined by an easy separation...to die is the fate of man but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.
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Women have two weapons - cosmetics and tears
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Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.
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In discussing these exceptions from the course of nature, the first question is, whether the fact be justly stated. That which is strange is delightful, and a pleasing error is not willingly detected.
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The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay.
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He that resigns his peace to little casualties, and suffers the course of his life to be interrupted for fortuitous inadvertencies or offences, delivers up himself to the direction of the wind, and loses all that constancy and equanimity which constitutes the chief praise of a wise man.
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