Quote

If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it to go to the beginning. He may perhaps not feel again the inclination.

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
Book
Quitting
Feel
Begins
Feels
Beginning
Men
Perhaps
Middle
Reading
Read
Inclination
May
Quit

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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We have now learned that rashness and imprudence will not be deterred from taking credit let us try whether fraud and avarice may be more easily restrained from giving it.
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To be of no Church is dangerous.
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Mutual complacency is the atmosphere of conjugal love.
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Every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from time to come.
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The mind is seldom quickened to very vigorous operations but by pain, or the dread of pain. We do not disturb ourselves with the detection of fallacies which do us no harm.
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Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?
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You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe.
Samuel Johnson
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There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.
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Other things may be seized by might, or purchased with money, but knowledge is to be gained only by study, and study to be prosecuted only in retirement.
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A lexicographer, a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.
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Games are good or bad as to their nature all may be perverted.
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This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.
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Some claim a place in the list of patriots, by an acrimonious and unremitting opposition to the court. This mark is by no means infallible. Patriotism is not necessarily included in rebellion. A man may hate his king, yet not love his country.
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Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order. - John V. Lindsay No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.
Samuel Johnson
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I have no more pleasure in hearing a man attempting wit and failing, than in seeing a man trying to leap over a ditch and tumbling into it
Samuel Johnson
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That all who are happy are equally happy is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. A small drinking glass and a large one may be equally full, but the large one holds more than the small.
Samuel Johnson
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Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use.
Samuel Johnson
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The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
Samuel Johnson
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Truth has no gradations nothing which admits of increase can be so much what it is, as truth is truth. There may be a strange thing, and a thing more strange. But if a proposition be true, there can be none more true.
Samuel Johnson
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The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in a few words.
Samuel Johnson