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There is nothing so minute, or inconsiderable, that I would not rather know it than not.

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
Rather
Nothing
Would
Inconsiderable
Minute
Minutes

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Nature never gives everything at once.
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And panting Time toil'd after him in vain.
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A successful author is equally in danger of the diminution of his fame, whether he continues or ceases to write.
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What is the reason that women servants ... have much lower wages than men servants ... when in fact our female house servants work much harder than the male?
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We may have uneasy feelings for seeing a creature in distress without pity for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them.
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The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.
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Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.
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By those who look close to the ground dirt will be seen. I hope I see things from a greater distance.
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Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim and when you are calculating, calculate.
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I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to he right.
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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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All power of fancy over reason is a degree of madness.
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No man hates him at whom he can laugh.
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I believe it will be found that those who marry late are best pleased with their children and those who marry early, with their partners.
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Every desire is a viper in the bosom, who while he was chill was harmless but when warmth gave him strength, exerted it in poison.
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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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Let him go abroad to a distant country let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.
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Pain and disease awaken us to convictions which are necessary to our moral condition.
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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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Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife he is always proud of himself as the source of it.
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