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Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.

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
Expectations
Owes
Praise
Expectation
Gold
Vulgar
Value
Diamond
Longer
Cheap
Becomes
Enterprise
Animate
Values
Raise
Diamonds
Like
Raises
Scarcity

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I am a friend to subordination, as most conducive to the happiness of society. There is a reciprocal pleasure in governing and being governed.
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I believe it will be found that those who marry late are best pleased with their children and those who marry early, with their partners.
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People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to amuse them.
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It is wonderful what a difference learning makes upon people even in the common intercourse of life, which does not appear to be much connected with it.
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By writing, you learn to write.
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Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.
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I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.
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He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel.
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Sir, if a man has a mind to prance, he must study at Christ Church and All Souls.
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Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.
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Luxury, so far as it reaches the people, will do good to the race of people it will strengthen and multiply them. Sir, no nation was ever hurt by luxury for, as I said before it can reach but a very few.
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Of those that spin out trifles and die without a memorial, many flatter themselves with high opinions of their own importance, and imagine that they are every day adding some improvement to human life.
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Every man may be observed to have a certain strain of lamentation, some peculiar theme of complaint on which he dwells in his moments of dejection.
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Idleness and timidity often despair without being overcome, and forbear attempts for fear of being defeated and we may promote the invigoration of faint endeavors, by showing what has already been performed.
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Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.
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They who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it.
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A man, doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote enquiries.
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Men become friends by a community of pleasures.
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Mutual complacency is the atmosphere of conjugal love.
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