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Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding can expect only to improve a single science.

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
Greater
Understanding
Allotted
Science
Providence
Even
Improve
Expect
Strength
Single
Study

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He that has too much to do will do something wrong.
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Politeness is fictitious benevolence.
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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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None are happy but by anticipation of change.
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I remember a passage in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.
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He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.
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He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience. We have always protected the Americans we may therefore subject them to government.
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Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause a while from learning to be wise. There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,- Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.
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Friendship may well deserve the sacrifice of pleasure, though not of conscience.
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Still we love The evil we do, until we suffer it.
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A successful author is equally in danger of the diminution of his fame, whether he continues or ceases to write.
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Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.
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How small of all that human hearts endure/That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.
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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
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Of those that spin out trifles and die without a memorial, many flatter themselves with high opinions of their own importance, and imagine that they are every day adding some improvement to human life.
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The richest author that ever grazed the common of literature.
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There is not, perhaps, to a mind well instructed, a more painful occurrence, than the death of one we have injured without reparation.
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Every other author may aspire to praise the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.
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I am a friend to subordination, as most conducive to the happiness of society. There is a reciprocal pleasure in governing and being governed.
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I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.
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