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Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet.
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
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
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Purpose
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive for a man may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent qualities as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight.
Samuel Johnson
Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
Samuel Johnson
If the guardian or the mother Tell the woes of willful waste, Scorn their counsel and their pother, You can hang or drown at last.
Samuel Johnson
...it will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor.
Samuel Johnson
Books have always a secret influence on the understanding we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas he that reads books of science, thogh without any fixed desire of improvement, will grow more knowing.
Samuel Johnson
Fears of the brave and follies of the wise.
Samuel Johnson
In general those parents have the most reverence who most deserve it for he that lives well cannot be despised.
Samuel Johnson
Such is the constitution of man that labour may be styled its own reward nor will any external incitements be requisite, if it be considered how much happiness is gained, and how much misery escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body.
Samuel Johnson
I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
Samuel Johnson
It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called, by the generality of mankind, a particular genius.
Samuel Johnson
The process is the reality.
Samuel Johnson
It is our first duty to serve society.
Samuel Johnson
Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
Samuel Johnson
I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
Samuel Johnson
The Church does not superstitiously observe days, merely as days, but as memorials of important facts. Christmas might be kept as well upon one day of the year as another but there should be a stated day for commemorating the birth of our Saviour, because there is danger that what may be done on any day, will be neglected.
Samuel Johnson
It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous.
Samuel Johnson
No man can perform so little as not to have reason to congratulate himself on his merits, when he beholds the multitude that live in total idleness, and have never yet endeavoured to be useful.
Samuel Johnson
And panting Time toil'd after him in vain.
Samuel Johnson
Whisky making is the art of making poison pleasant
Samuel Johnson
There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets.
Samuel Johnson
