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Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Social sorrow loses half its pain.
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In general those parents have the most reverence who most deserve it for he that lives well cannot be despised.
Samuel Johnson
With what hope can we endeavor to persuade the ladies that the time spent at the toilet is lost in vanity.
Samuel Johnson
Had I learned to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.
Samuel Johnson
The true effect of genuine politeness seems to be rather ease than pleasure.
Samuel Johnson
The gloomy and the resentful are always found among those who have nothing to do or who do nothing.
Samuel Johnson
When a man feel the reprehension of a friend seconded by his own heart, he is easily heated into resentment.
Samuel Johnson
The best part of every author is in general to be found in his book, I assure you.
Samuel Johnson
It is so far from being natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilised society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together.
Samuel Johnson
What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.
Samuel Johnson
To go and see one druidical temple is only to see that it is nothing, for there is neither art nor power in it and seeing one is quite enough.
Samuel Johnson
You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.
Samuel Johnson
Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle for the calamities of life, like the necessities of Nature, are calls to labor and diligence.
Samuel Johnson
Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.
Samuel Johnson
Economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty, and of ease, and the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness and health.
Samuel Johnson
We have now learned that rashness and imprudence will not be deterred from taking credit let us try whether fraud and avarice may be more easily restrained from giving it.
Samuel Johnson
As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles.
Samuel Johnson
Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.
Samuel Johnson
We all live upon the hope of pleasing somebody, and the pleasure of pleasing ought to be greatest, and at last always will be greatest, when our endeavours are exerted in consequence of our duty.
Samuel Johnson
In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.
Samuel Johnson
