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Whatever professes to benefit by pleasing must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply something sudden and unexpected that which elevates must always surprise.

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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Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.
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You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe.
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As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles.
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Governors being accustomed to hear of more crimes than they can punish, and more wrongs than they can redress, set themselves at ease by indiscriminate negligence, and presently forget the request when they lose sight of the petitioner.
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Friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness and its permanence from the other.
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Order is a lovely nymph, the child of Beauty and Wisdom her attendants are Comfort, Neatness, and Activity her abode is the valley of happiness: she is always to be found when sought for, and never appears so lovely as when contrasted with her opponent, Disorder.
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The coquette has companions, indeed, but no lovers,--for love is respectful and timorous and where among her followers will she find a husband?
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Revenge is an act of passion vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged crimes are avenged.
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Good-humor is a state between gayety and unconcern,--the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another.
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No man hates him at whom he can laugh.
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Composition is for the most part an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.
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To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence--an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.
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The equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.
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What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.
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Most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them.
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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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The present time is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.
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When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.
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Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals.
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