Quote

Excise: A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.

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
Upon
Hateful
Judges
Commodity
Adjudged
Property
Excise
Judging
Levied
Taxes
Wretches
Paid
Commodities
Common
Hired

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Every government is perpetually degenerating towards corruption, from which it must be rescued at certain periods by the resuscitation of its first principles, and the re-establishment of its original constitution.
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Reason and truth will prevail at last
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Most men are more willing to indulge in easy vices than to practise laborious virtues.
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Cruel with guilt, and daring with despair, the midnight murderer bursts the faithless bar invades the sacred hour of silent rest and leaves, unseen, a dagger in your breast.
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Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is but it is not easy to tell what it is.
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Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world.
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We go from anticipation to anticipation, not from satisfaction to satisfaction.
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To scatter praise or blame without regard to justice is to destroy the distinction of good and evil. Many have no other test of actions than general opinion and all are so far influenced by a sense of reputation that they are often restrained by fear of reproach, and excited by hope of honour, when other principles have lost their power.
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Reproof should not exhaust its power upon petty failings.
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If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.
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We have now learned that rashness and imprudence will not be deterred from taking credit let us try whether fraud and avarice may be more easily restrained from giving it.
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An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty.
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Occupation alone is happiness.
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What is twice read is commonly better remembered that what is transcribed.
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To love their country has been considered as virtue in men, whose love could not be otherwise than blind, because their preference was made without, a comparison but it has never been my fortune to find, either in ancient or modern writers, any honourable mention of those, who have, with equal blindness, hated their country.
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