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Inquiries into the heart are not for man.

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
Inquiry
Heart
Men
Inquiries

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By writing, you learn to write.
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The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, were exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue.
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A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
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Sorrow is the mere rust of the soul. Activity will cleanse and brighten it.
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Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.
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Discord generally operates in little things it is inflamed ... by contrariety of taste oftener than principles.
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Faults and defects every work of man must have.
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The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.
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Riches, perhaps, do not so often produce crimes as incite accusers.
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It is unpleasing to represent our affairs to our own disadvantage yet it is necessary to shew the evils which we desire to be removed.
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At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.
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Every man, however hopeless his pretensions may appear, has some project by which he hopes to rise to reputation some art by which he imagines that the attention of the world will be attracted some quality, good or bad, which discriminates him from the common herd of mortals, and by which others may be persuaded to love, or compelled to fear him.
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There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse.
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Reproof should not exhaust its power upon petty failings.
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Present opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages.
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