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Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression we must always purpose to do more or better than in time past.

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
Past
Better
Must
Always
Time
Progression
Life
Rational
Worthy
Purpose

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Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding.
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What is the reason that women servants ... have much lower wages than men servants ... when in fact our female house servants work much harder than the male?
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Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality they discourse like angels, but they live like men.
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Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.
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Being married to those sleepy-souled women is just like playing at cards for nothing: no passion is excited and the time is filled up. I do not, however, envy a fellow one of those honeysuckle wives for my part, as they are but creepers at best and commonly destroy the tree they so tenderly cling about.
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Glory, the casual gift of thoughtless crowds! Glory, the bribe of avaricious virtue!
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Rash oaths, whether kept or broken, frequently produce guilt.
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Falsehood always endeavors to copy the mien and attitude of truth.
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We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
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The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy their real faults are immediately detected and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an individual weight of calumny will be super-added.
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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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Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know That life protracted is protracted woe.
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In civilized society we all depend upon each other, and our happiness is very much owing to the good opinion of mankind.
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Levellers wish to level down as far as themselves but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.
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The really happy woman is the one who can enjoy the scenery when she has to take a detour. Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but rather a manner of traveling.
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Many falsehoods are passing into uncontradicted history.
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It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous.
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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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Remember that nothing will supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity long continued will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible.
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Too much vigor in the beginning of an undertaking often intercepts and prevents the steadiness and perseverance always necessary in the conduct of a complicated scheme.
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