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The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Lexicographer
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Literary Critic
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
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Always
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
How gloomy would be the mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he should never die: that what now acts shall continue its agency, and what now thinks shall think on forever!
Samuel Johnson
Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.
Samuel Johnson
Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.
Samuel Johnson
To mean understandings, it is sufficient honour to be numbered amongst the lowest labourers of learning but different abilities must find different tasks. To hew stone, would have been unworthy of Palladio and to have rambled in search of shells and flowers, had but ill suited with the capacity of Newton.
Samuel Johnson
The botanist looks upon the astronomer as a being unworthy of his regard and he that is glowing great and happy by electrifying a bottle wonders how the world can be engaged by trifling prattle about war and peace.
Samuel Johnson
You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
Samuel Johnson
Abuse is often of service. There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence.
Samuel Johnson
Language is the dress of thought.
Samuel Johnson
He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
Samuel Johnson
To purchase Heaven has gold the power? Can gold remove the mortal hour? In life can love be bought with gold? Are friendship's pleasures to be sold? No--all that's worth a wish--a thought, Fair virtue gives unbribed, unbought. Cease then on trash thy hopes to bind, Let nobler views engage thy mind.
Samuel Johnson
Those that have done nothing in life, are not qualified to judge of those that have done little
Samuel Johnson
Pound St. Paul's Church into atoms, and consider any single atom it is to be sure, good for nothing but put all these atoms together, and you have St. Paul's Church. So it is with human felicity, which is made up of many ingredients, each of which may be shown to be very insignificant.
Samuel Johnson
To go and see one druidical temple is only to see that it is nothing, for there is neither art nor power in it and seeing one is quite enough.
Samuel Johnson
The future is bought with the present.
Samuel Johnson
Your manuscript is both good and original but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.
Samuel Johnson
Whatever is formed for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity.
Samuel Johnson
A book should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it.
Samuel Johnson
The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind.
Samuel Johnson
The labor of rising from the ground will be great, ... but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall.
Samuel Johnson
A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down.
Samuel Johnson
