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A successful author is equally in danger of the diminution of his fame, whether he continues or ceases to write.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
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Successful
Diminution
Whether
Ceases
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Continues
Writing
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Equally
Cease
Fame
Danger
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.
Samuel Johnson
He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.
Samuel Johnson
Those who are in the power of evil habits must conquer them as they can and conquered they must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be attained: but those who are not yet subject to their influence may, by timely caution, preserve their freedom.
Samuel Johnson
I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.
Samuel Johnson
Friendship may well deserve the sacrifice of pleasure, though not of conscience.
Samuel Johnson
Composition is for the most part an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.
Samuel Johnson
I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.
Samuel Johnson
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.
Samuel Johnson
You never find people laboring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful income.
Samuel Johnson
We consider ourselves as defective in memory, either because we remember less than we desire, or less than we suppose others to remember.
Samuel Johnson
Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.
Samuel Johnson
Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.
Samuel Johnson
Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use.
Samuel Johnson
Every man, however hopeless his pretensions may appear, has some project by which he hopes to rise to reputation some art by which he imagines that the attention of the world will be attracted some quality, good or bad, which discriminates him from the common herd of mortals, and by which others may be persuaded to love, or compelled to fear him.
Samuel Johnson
The complaint, therefore, that all topicks are preoccupied, is nothing more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness, by which some discourage others, and some themselves the mutability of mankind will always furnish writers with new images, and the luxuriance of fancy may always embellish them with new decorations.
Samuel Johnson
Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
Samuel Johnson
Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
Samuel Johnson
Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.
Samuel Johnson
Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.
Samuel Johnson
None of the projects or designs which exercise the mind of man are equally subject to obstructions and disappointments with the pursuit of fame.
Samuel Johnson
