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Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.

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
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
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Excelled
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Enmity
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Little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it.
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A man, doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote enquiries.
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It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage.
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Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.
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When a man feel the reprehension of a friend seconded by his own heart, he is easily heated into resentment.
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Ladies, stock and tend your hive, Trifle not at thirty-five For, howe'er we boast and strive, Life declines from thirty-five He that ever hopes to thrive Must begin by thirty-five.
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The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment.
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The eye of the mind, like that of the body, can only extend its view to new objects, by losing sight of those which are now before it.
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It is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the chastity of a wife.
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The mind is seldom quickened to very vigorous operations but by pain, or the dread of pain. We do not disturb ourselves with the detection of fallacies which do us no harm.
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Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.
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If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
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It is our first duty to serve society.
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Unless a woman has an amorous heart, she is a dull companion.
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A man of sense and education should meet a suitable companion in a wife. It is a miserable thing when the conversation can only be such as whether the mutton should be boiled or roasted, and probably a dispute about that.
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The mathematicians are well acquainted with the difference between pure science, which has only to do with ideas, and the application of its laws to the use of life, in which they are constrained to submit to the imperfections of matter and the influence of accidents.
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The balls of sight are so formed, that one man's eyes are spectacles to another, to read his heart with.
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I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.
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Critics, like the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest.
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The animadversions of critics are commonly such as may easily provoke the sedatest writer to some quickness of resentment and asperity of reply.
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