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Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding.

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
Food
Understanding
Great
Men
Culinary
Inequality
Cooking
Dinner
Meet

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Sir, as a man advances in life, he gets what is better than admiration, - judgement, to estimate things at their true value.
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The perfect day for quitting is not real. It will never come, so might as well start today
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Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.
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Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding can expect only to improve a single science.
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When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, Distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.
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Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.
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Spring is the season of gaiety, and winter of terror in spring the heart of tranquility dances to the melody of the groves, and the eye of benevolence sparkles at the sight of happiness and plenty: in winter, compassion melts at universal calamity, and the tear of softness starts at the wailing of hunger and the cries of the creation in distress
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It is better to live rich than to die rich.
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New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.
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...it will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor.
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He that never thinks can never be wise.
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In order that all men might be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
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The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.
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Wit will never make a man rich, but there are places where riches will always make a wit.
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The business of a poet is to examine not the individual but the species to remark general properties and large appearances.
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Liberty is the parent of truth, but truth and decency are sometimes at variance. All men and all propositions are to be treated here as they deserve, and there are many who have no claim either to respect or decency.
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No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance, or to extinguish the desire of fond endearments and tender officiousness and, therefore, no one should think it unnecessary to learn those arts by which friendship may be gained.
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It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.
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Critics, like the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest.
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Few have abilities so much needed by the rest of the world as to be caressed on their own terms and he that will not condescend to recommend himself by external embellishments must submit to the fate of just sentiment meanly expressed, and be ridiculed and forgotten before he is understood.
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