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There is a frightful interval between the seed and the timber.

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
Intervals
Seed
Seeds
Progress
Frightful
Interval
Timber

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Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet. From those sounds which we hear on small or on coarse occasions, we do not easily receive strong impressions, or delightful images and words to which we are nearly strangers, whenever they occur, draw that attention on themselves which they should transmit to other things.
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Whatever you have spend less.
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By writing, you learn to write.
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And panting Time toil'd after him in vain.
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Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay an author.
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Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness, which nature has kindly placed within our reach.
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It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.
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All imposture weakens confidence and chills benevolence.
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Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free.
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I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.
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No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.
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Reason and truth will prevail at last
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No evil is insupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong.
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Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.
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He who endeavors to please must appear pleased.
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Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties.
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I am a hardened and shameless tea drinker, who has, for twenty years, diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant whose kettle has scarcely time to cool who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and, with tea, welcomes the morning.
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The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
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He who praises everybody, praises nobody.
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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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