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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.

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
Scarcely
Historian
Touched
Poet
Style
Left
Adorn
Nothing
Untouched
Writing
Naturalist

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life for there is in London all that life can afford.
Samuel Johnson
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Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.
Samuel Johnson
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To purchase Heaven has gold the power? Can gold remove the mortal hour? In life can love be bought with gold? Are friendship's pleasures to be sold? No--all that's worth a wish--a thought, Fair virtue gives unbribed, unbought. Cease then on trash thy hopes to bind, Let nobler views engage thy mind.
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I remember a passage in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.
Samuel Johnson
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He who writes much will not easily escape a manner, such a recurrence of particular modes as may be easily noted.
Samuel Johnson
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Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.
Samuel Johnson
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So different are the colors of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.
Samuel Johnson
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No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
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While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.
Samuel Johnson
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Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding can expect only to improve a single science.
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Hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain.
Samuel Johnson
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Curiosity, like all other desires, produces pain as well as pleasure.
Samuel Johnson
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I am willing to love all of mankind, except an American.
Samuel Johnson
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Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
Samuel Johnson
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His virtues walked their narrow round, Nor made a pause, nor left a void And sure the Eternal Master found The single talent well employed.
Samuel Johnson
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But the distant hope of being one day useful or eminent ought not to mislead us too far from that study which is equally requisite to the great and mean, to the celebrated and obscure the art of moderating the desires, of repressing the appetites and of conciliating or retaining the favour of mankind.
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Stand Firm for your country, and become a man Honour'd and lov'd: It were a noble life, To be found dead, embracing her.
Samuel Johnson
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Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree. We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
Samuel Johnson
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Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality they discourse like angels, but they live like men.
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Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
Samuel Johnson