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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
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Levellers wish to level down as far as themselves but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.
Samuel Johnson
Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.
Samuel Johnson
The faults of a writer of acknowledged excellence are more dangerous, because the influence of his example is more extensive and the interest of learning requires that they should be discovered and stigmatized, before they have the sanction of antiquity conferred upon them, and become precedents of indisputable authority.
Samuel Johnson
You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money to those who work, as the recompense of their labor, than when you give money merely in charity.
Samuel Johnson
If I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him.
Samuel Johnson
Rain is good for vegetables, and for the animals who eat those vegetables, and for the animals who eat those animals.
Samuel Johnson
He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
Samuel Johnson
Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.
Samuel Johnson
Rash oaths, whether kept or broken, frequently produce guilt.
Samuel Johnson
Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance.
Samuel Johnson
Virtue is too often merely local.
Samuel Johnson
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef love, like being enlivened with champagne.
Samuel Johnson
Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
Samuel Johnson
You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.
Samuel Johnson
There is a certain degree of temptation which will overcome any virtue. Now, in so far as you approach temptation to a man, you do him an injury and, if he is overcome, you share his guilt.
Samuel Johnson
The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.
Samuel Johnson
Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness, which nature has kindly placed within our reach.
Samuel Johnson
When the eye or the imagination is struck with an uncommon work, the next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it was performed
Samuel Johnson
Of the present state, whatever it be, we feel and are forced to confess the misery yet when the same state is again at a distance, imagination paints it as desirable.
Samuel Johnson
We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor
Samuel Johnson
