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Words become low by the occasions to which they are applied, or the general character of them who use them and the disgust which they produce arises from the revival of those images with which they are commonly united.

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
General
Revival
Produce
Arises
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Applied
Words
Disgusting
Use
Occasions
Become
Images
Character
Arise
Disgust
Lows
Commonly

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Wickedness is always easier than virtue for it takes the short cut to everything.
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Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience you will find it a calamity.
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Every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from time to come.
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The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality.
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He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar and many fold in their passage while they lie waiting for the gale.
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Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment.
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If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim.
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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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When two Eglishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.
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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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To wipe all tears from off all faces is a task too hard for mortals but to alleviate misfortunes is often within the most limited power: yet the opportunities which every day affords of relieving the most wretched of human beings are overlooked and neglected with equal disregard of policy and goodness.
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Any of us would kill a cow rather than not have beef.
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Though it is evident, that not more than one age or people can deserve the censure of being more averse from learning than any other, yet at all times knowledge must have encountered impediments, and wit been mortified with contempt, or harassed with persecution.
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Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness for great things cannot have escaped former observation.
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There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.
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No one will persist long in helping someone who will not help themselves.
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It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.
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Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.
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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.
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Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
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