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Among the numerous stratagems by which pride endeavors to recommend folly to regard, there is scarcely one that meets with less success than affectation, or a perpetual disguise of the real character by fictitious appearances.

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
Appearance
Numerous
Regard
Recommend
Pride
Scarcely
Stratagems
Among
Meets
Stratagem
Less
Disguise
Fictitious
Success
Perpetual
Affectation
Character
Endeavor
Endeavors
Real
Folly
Appearances

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A fallible being will fail somewhere.
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Had I learned to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.
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Economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty, and of ease, and the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness and health.
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Wine gives great pleasure, and every pleasure is of itself a good. and A man should cultivate his mind so as to have that confidence and readiness without wine, which wine gives.
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He that resigns his peace to little casualties, and suffers the course of his life to be interrupted for fortuitous inadvertencies or offences, delivers up himself to the direction of the wind, and loses all that constancy and equanimity which constitutes the chief praise of a wise man.
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Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation.
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Much is due to those who first broke the way to knowledge, and left only to their successors the task of smoothing it.
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All intellectual improvement arises from leisure.
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There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow.
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The main of life is composed of small incidents and petty occurrences of wishes for objects not remote, and grief for disappointments of no fatal consequence.
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People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to amuse them.
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The parallel circumstances and kindred images to which we readily conform our minds are, above all other writings, to be found in the lives of particular persons, and therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography.
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He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience. We have always protected the Americans we may therefore subject them to government.
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Dishonor waits on perfidy. A man should blush to think a falsehood it is the crime of cowards.
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Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words.
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The really happy woman is the one who can enjoy the scenery when she has to take a detour. Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but rather a manner of traveling.
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None of the projects or designs which exercise the mind of man are equally subject to obstructions and disappointments with the pursuit of fame.
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Such is the constitution of man that labour may be styled its own reward nor will any external incitements be requisite, if it be considered how much happiness is gained, and how much misery escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body.
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A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists without any practical regard to morals and religion he may be learning not to live but to reason... while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unreformed.
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Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.
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