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Many leave the labours of half their life to their executors and to chance, because they will not send them abroad unfinished, and are unable to finish them, having prescribed to themselves such a degree of exactness as human diligence can scarcely ontain.

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
Writing
Degree
Diligence
Life
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Unfinished
Leave
Scarcely
Chance
Abroad
Half
Unable
Executors
Human
Finish
Labours
Humans
Labour
Exactness
Many
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Prescribed

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The future is purchased by the present.
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It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage.
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Profuseness is a cruel and crafty demon, that gradually involves her followers in dependence and debt that is, fetters them with irons that enter into their souls.
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We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide.
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Those authors are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence.
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I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.
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That observation which is called knowledge of the world will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good.
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Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?
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I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
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It is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful.
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To mean understandings, it is sufficient honour to be numbered amongst the lowest labourers of learning but different abilities must find different tasks. To hew stone, would have been unworthy of Palladio and to have rambled in search of shells and flowers, had but ill suited with the capacity of Newton.
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It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm.
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The fiction of happiness is propagated by every tongue and confirmed by every look till at last all profess the joy which they do not feel and consent to yield to the general delusion.
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It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.
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Golf is a game in which you claim the privileges of age, and retain the playthings of childhood.
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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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Life is but short no time can be afforded but for the indulgence of real sorry, or contests upon questions seriously momentous. Let us not throw away any of our days upon useless resentment, or contend who shall hold out longest in stubborn malignity. It is best not to be angry and best, in the next place, to be quickly reconciled.
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Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.
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If in an actor there appears an utter vacancy of meaning, a frigid equality, a stupid languor, a torpid apathy, the greatest kindness that can be shown him is a speedy sentence of expulsion.
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