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The desires of man increase with his acquisitions.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Men
Acquisitions
Acquisition
Desires
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Desire
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor
Samuel Johnson
Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather political than religious.
Samuel Johnson
Distance either of time or place is sufficient to reconcile weak minds to wonderful relations.
Samuel Johnson
A continual feast of commendation is only to be obtained by merit or by wealth: many are therefore obliged to content themselves with single morsels, and recompense the infrequency of their enjoyment by excess and riot, whenever fortune sets the banquet before them.
Samuel Johnson
It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage.
Samuel Johnson
The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.
Samuel Johnson
Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive for a man may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent qualities as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight.
Samuel Johnson
The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.
Samuel Johnson
In all pleasures hope is a considerable part.
Samuel Johnson
Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim and when you are calculating, calculate.
Samuel Johnson
Want of tenderness is want of parts, and is no less a proof of stupidity than depravity.
Samuel Johnson
God Himself, sir, does not propose to judge a man until his life is over. Why should you and I?
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
Dishonor waits on perfidy. A man should blush to think a falsehood it is the crime of cowards.
Samuel Johnson
Age is rarely despised but when it is, contemptible.
Samuel Johnson
The whole power of cunning is privative to say nothing, and to do nothing , is the utmost of its reach. Yet men, thus narrow by nature and mean by art, are sometimes able to rise by the miscarriages of bravery and the openness of integrity, and, watching failures and snatching opportunities, obtain advantages which belong to higher characters.
Samuel Johnson
How can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false? Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives
Samuel Johnson
Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.
Samuel Johnson
I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom.
Samuel Johnson
We are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure.
Samuel Johnson
