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I inherited a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.

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
Sober
Melancholy
Mad
Least
Father
Made
Life
Vile
Inherited

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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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No wonder, Sir, that he is vain a man who is perpetually flattered in every mode that can be conceived. So many bellows have blown the fire, that one wonders he is not by this time become a cinder.
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Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding.
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He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
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I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
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Books have always a secret influence on the understanding we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas he that reads books of science, thogh without any fixed desire of improvement, will grow more knowing.
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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.
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Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.
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A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
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Let me rejoice in the light which Thou hast imparted let me serve Thee with active zeal, humbled confidence, and wait with patient expectation for the time in which the soul which Thou receivest shall be satisfied with knowledge.
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The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.
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Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause a while from learning to be wise. There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,- Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.
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The vicious count their years virtuous, their acts.
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We go from anticipation to anticipation, not from satisfaction to satisfaction.
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Critics, like the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest.
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Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religions hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper and deeper.
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The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.
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