Quote

Do not ... hope wholly to reason away your troubles do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind.

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
Reason
Dies
Feed
Mind
Attention
Sunshine
Upon
Fill
Hope
Sin
Wish
Thoughts
Imperceptibly
Business
Trouble
Intervals
Death
Break
Troubles
Away
Company
Wholly

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The main of life is composed of small incidents and petty occurrences of wishes for objects not remote, and grief for disappointments of no fatal consequence.
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Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.
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The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence.
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In the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence.
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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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Nothing can be truly great which is not right.
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When the eye or the imagination is struck with an uncommon work, the next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it was performed
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Few of those who fill the world with books, have any pretensions to the hope either of pleasing or instructing. They have often no other task than to lay two books before them, out of which they compile a third, without any new material of their own, and with very little application of judgment to those which former authors have supplied.
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How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?
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Critics, like the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest.
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The wickedness of a loose or profane author is more atrocious than that of a giddy libertine or drunken ravisher, not only because it extends its effects wider, as a pestilence that taints the air is more destructive than poison infused in a draught, but because it is committed with cool deliberation.
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Books without the knowledge of life are useless.
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From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,- Path, motive, guide, original, and end.
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Men are like stone jugs - you may lug them where you like by the ears.
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Books, says Lord Bacon, can never teach us the use of books the student must learn by commerce with mankind to reduce his speculations to practice. No man should think so highly of himself as to think he can receive but little light from books no one so meanly, as to believe he can discover nothing but what is to be learned from them.
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To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.
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Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do.
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The king who makes war on his enemies tenderly distresses his subjects most cruelly.
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Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us.
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