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A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down.

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
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Right
Thing
Men
Uncivil
Knock
Rude
Another

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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
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Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.
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Sir, it is wrong to stir up law-suits but when once it is certain that a law-suit is to go on, there is nothing wrong in a lawyer's endeavouring that he shall have the benefit, rather than another.
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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.
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All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.
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Tea's proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.
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Pension: An allowance made to anyone without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.
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Where there is no difficulty there is no praise.
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To love their country has been considered as virtue in men, whose love could not be otherwise than blind, because their preference was made without, a comparison but it has never been my fortune to find, either in ancient or modern writers, any honourable mention of those, who have, with equal blindness, hated their country.
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Reason and truth will prevail at last
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It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm.
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We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure.
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The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay.
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What ever the motive for the insult, it is always best to overlook it for folly doesn't deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect.
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Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without any tears.
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There is a certain race of men that either imagine it their duty, or make it their amusement, to hinder the reception of every work of learning or genius, who stand as sentinels in the avenues of fame, and value themselves upon giving Ignorance and Envy the first notice of a prey.
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A vow is a snare for sin
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It is indeed not easy to distinguish affectation from habit he that has once studiously developed a style, rarely writes afterwards with complete ease.
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These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes.
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The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.
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