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Every desire is a viper in the bosom, who while he was chill was harmless but when warmth gave him strength, exerted it in poison.

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
Chill
Warmth
Poison
Viper
Gave
Vipers
Strength
Exerted
Desire
Harmless
Every
Bosom
Bosoms

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In misery's darkest cavern known, His useful care was ever nigh Where hopeless anguish pour'd his groan, And lonely want retir'd to die.
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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.
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Critics, like the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest.
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All envy is proportionate to desire we are uneasy at the attainments of another, according as we think our own happiness would be advanced by the addition of that which he withholds from us.
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He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
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Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his home town: yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life and as nothing is little to him that feels it with gre
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I would consent to have a limb amputated to recover my spirits
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Irresolution and mutability are often the faults of men whose views are wide, and whose imagination is vigorous and excursive.
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Everybody knows worse of himself than he knows of other men.
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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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The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another.
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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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Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.
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A man who always talks for fame never can be pleasing. The man who talks to unburthen his mind is the man to delight you.
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Truth has no gradations nothing which admits of increase can be so much what it is, as truth is truth. There may be a strange thing, and a thing more strange. But if a proposition be true, there can be none more true.
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From all our observations we may collect with certainty, that misery is the lot of man, but cannot discover in what particular condition it will find most alleviations.
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The animadversions of critics are commonly such as may easily provoke the sedatest writer to some quickness of resentment and asperity of reply.
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