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To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.

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
Age
Omit
Death
Siege
Time
Post
Posts
Neglect
Preparation
Attack
Sleep

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.
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Unintelligible language is a lantern without a light.
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No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
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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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It is so far from being natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilised society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together.
Samuel Johnson
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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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What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.
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There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.
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He who sees different ways to the same end, will, unless he watches carefully over his own conduct, lay out too much of his attention upon the comparison of probabilities and the adjustment of expedients, and pause in the choice of his road, till some accident intercepts his journey.
Samuel Johnson
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As all error is meanness, it is incumbent on every man who consults his own dignity, to retract it as soon as he discovers it.
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A man should be careful never to tell tales of himself to his own disadvantage. People may be amused at the time, but they will be remembered, and brought out against him upon some subsequent occasion.
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God Himself, sir, does not propose to judge a man until his life is over. Why should you and I?
Samuel Johnson
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He that is pushing his predecessors into the gulf of obscurity, cannot but sometimes suspect, that he must himself sink in like manner, and, as he stands upon the same precipice, be swept away with the same violence.
Samuel Johnson
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A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.
Samuel Johnson
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As to the rout that is made about people who are ruined by extravagance, it is no matter to the nation that some individuals suffer. When so much general productive exertion is the consequence of luxury, the nation does not care though there are debtors nay, they would not care though their creditors were there too.
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Little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it.
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Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.
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There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?
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Those who attempt nothing themselves think every thing easily performed, and consider the unsuccessful always as criminal.
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He that never thinks can never be wise.
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