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The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, were exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue.

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
Virtue
Performances
Slightly
Biographer
Often
Daily
Display
Biographers
Business
Pass
Aside
Excel
Men
Greatness
Privacy
Exterior
Life
Lead
Cast
Incidents
Produce
Casts
Prudence
Thoughts
Minute
Domestic
Minutes
Details
Vulgar
Appendages

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Advice is offensive, it shows us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves.
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Men are like stone jugs - you may lug them where you like by the ears.
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There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets.
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Since life itself is uncertain, nothing which has life for its basis can boast much stability.
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Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.
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Evil is uncertain in the same degree as good, and for the reason that we ought not to hope too securely, we ought not to fear with to much dejection.
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As pride sometimes is hid under humility, idleness if often covered by turbulence and hurry.
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We suffer equal pain from the pertinacious adhesion of unwelcome images, as from the evanescence of those which are pleasing and useful.
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Every reader should remember the diffidence of Socrates, and repair by his candour the injuries of time: he should impute the seeming defects of his author to some chasm of intelligence, and suppose that the sense which is now weak was once forcible
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When we see our enemies and friends gliding away before us, let us not forget that we are subject to the general law of mortality, and shall soon be where our doom will be fixed forever.
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Modern writers are the moons of literature they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.
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They make a rout about universal liberty, without considering that all that is to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty.
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Smoking is a shocking thing - blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people's mouths, eyes, and noses, and having the same thing done to us.
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It is not possible to be regarded with tenderness, except by a few. That merit which gives greatness and renown diffuses its influence to a wide compass, but acts weakly on every single breast it is placed at a distance from common spectators, and shines like one of the remote stars, of which the light reaches us, but not the heat.
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Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness for great things cannot have escaped former observation.
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Sorrow is the mere rust of the soul. Activity will cleanse and brighten it.
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Of all the griefs that harass the distress'd, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart, Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart.
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Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.
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..to write and to live are very different. Many who praise virtue, do no more than praise it.
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The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
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