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A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists without any practical regard to morals and religion he may be learning not to live but to reason... while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unreformed.

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
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals.
Samuel Johnson
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It is not possible to be regarded with tenderness, except by a few. That merit which gives greatness and renown diffuses its influence to a wide compass, but acts weakly on every single breast it is placed at a distance from common spectators, and shines like one of the remote stars, of which the light reaches us, but not the heat.
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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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To those who have lived long together, everything heard and everything seen recalls some pleasure communicated, some benefit conferred, some petty quarrel or some slight endearment. Esteem of great powers, or amiable qualities newly discovered may embroider a day or a week, but a friendship of twenty years is interwoven with the texture of life.
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He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.
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Other things may be seized by might, or purchased with money, but knowledge is to be gained only by study, and study to be prosecuted only in retirement.
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All power of fancy over reason is a degree of madness.
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The future is purchased by the present.
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Sir, if a man has a mind to prance, he must study at Christ Church and All Souls.
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It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.
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Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.
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Critics, like the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest.
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A contempt of the monuments and the wisdom of the past, may be justly reckoned one of the reigning follies of these days, to which pride and idleness have equally contributed.
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If in an actor there appears an utter vacancy of meaning, a frigid equality, a stupid languor, a torpid apathy, the greatest kindness that can be shown him is a speedy sentence of expulsion.
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We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures
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The truly strong and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.
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Occupation alone is happiness.
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The liberty of using harmless pleasure will not be disputed but it is still to be examined what pleasures are harmless.
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The heroes of literary history have been no less remarkable for what they have suffered than for what they have achieved.
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A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.
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