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The authors that in any nation last from age to age are very few, because there are very few that have any other claim to notice than that they catch hold on present curiosity, and gratify some accidental desire, or produce some temporary conveniency.

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
Desire
Produce
Accidental
Writing
Nation
Authors
Hold
Temporary
Present
Claim
Nations
Notice
Age
Catch
Lasts
Curiosity
Last
Claims
Gratify

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A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.
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In the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence.
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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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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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Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order. - John V. Lindsay No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.
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Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
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It is better a man should be abused than forgotten.
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As all error is meanness, it is incumbent on every man who consults his own dignity, to retract it as soon as he discovers it.
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Whatever is formed for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity.
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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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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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Virtue is too often merely local.
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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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Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without any very accurate inquiry whether it is right.
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Whisky making is the art of making poison pleasant
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I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
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But to the particular species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some early conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and emulation.
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Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world.
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Applause abates diligence.
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The whole of life is but keeping away the thoughts of death.
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