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There are, indeed, few kinds of composition from which an author, however learned or ingenious, can hope a long continuance of fame.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
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There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.
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As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.
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Power is gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent.
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What signifies protesting so against flattery when a person speaks well of one, it must either be true or false, you know if true, let us rejoice in his good opinion if he lies, it is a proof at least that he loves more to please me, than to sit s
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Every human being whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge.
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I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.
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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.
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Whatever professes to benefit by pleasing must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply something sudden and unexpected that which elevates must always surprise.
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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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Inquiries into the heart are not for man.
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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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A voyage to the moon, however romantick and absurd the scheme may now appear, since the properties of air have been better understood, seemed highly probable to many of the aspiring wits in the last century
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Read over your compositions and whenever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
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The uniform necessities of human nature produce in a great measure uniformity of life, and for part of the day make one place like another to dress and to undress, to eat and to sleep, are the same in London as in the country.
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What ever the motive for the insult, it is always best to overlook it for folly doesn't deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect.
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Unless a woman has an amorous heart, she is a dull companion.
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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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There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?
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That friendship may be at once fond and lasting, there must not only be equal virtue on each part, but virtue of the same kind not only the same end must be proposed, but the same means must be approved by both.
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Happiness, said he, must be something solid and permanent, without fear and without uncertainty.
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