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The business of life summons us away from useless grief, and calls us to the exercise of those virtues of which we are lamenting our deprivation.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Life
Virtues
Calls
Useless
Grief
Exercise
Virtue
Lamenting
Business
Summons
Away
Deprivation

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If we estimate dignity by immediate usefulness, agriculture is undoubtedly the first and noblest science.
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It is unpleasing to represent our affairs to our own disadvantage yet it is necessary to shew the evils which we desire to be removed.
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It is however, reasonable, to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance towards it, though we know it never can be reached.
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While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.
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Those authors are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence.
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When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.
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It is astonishing that any man can forbear enquiring seriously whether there is a God whether God is just whether this life is the only state of existence.
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But to the particular species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some early conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and emulation.
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When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
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This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, slow rises worth by poverty depressed.
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Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.
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The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.
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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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To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude it is not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
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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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A person loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal.
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Being married to those sleepy-souled women is just like playing at cards for nothing: no passion is excited and the time is filled up. I do not, however, envy a fellow one of those honeysuckle wives for my part, as they are but creepers at best and commonly destroy the tree they so tenderly cling about.
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No one will persist long in helping someone who will not help themselves.
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Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.
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Everybody knows worse of himself than he knows of other men.
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