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The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth.

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
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Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Royalty
Monarchy
Ordinary
Government
Would
Trappings
Commonwealth

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Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties.
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The most useful truths are always universal, and unconnected with accidents and customs.
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Riches, perhaps, do not so often produce crimes as incite accusers.
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To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence--an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.
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Consider what importance to society the chastity of women is. Upon that all the property in the world depends. We hang a thief for stealing a sheep but the unchastity of a woman transfers sheep and farm and all from the right owner.
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Language is the dress of thought and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy
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It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called, by the generality of mankind, a particular genius.
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Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
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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.
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Rash oaths, whether kept or broken, frequently produce guilt.
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Your manuscript is both good and original but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.
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The time will come to every human being when it must be known how well he can bear to die.
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I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
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There is nothing so minute, or inconsiderable, that I would not rather know it than not.
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The ambition of superior sensibility and superior eloquence disposes the lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and communicate it at another and each labors first to impose upon himself and then to propagate the imposture.
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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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Every man has something to do which he neglects, every man has faults to conquer which he delays to combat.
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