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People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to amuse them.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Bookseller
Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Amuse
Willingly
General
Read
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Anything
People
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his home town: yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life and as nothing is little to him that feels it with gre
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Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.
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Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.
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Every man is of importance to himself.
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And panting Time toil'd after him in vain.
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Do not ... hope wholly to reason away your troubles do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind.
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A soldier's time is passed in distress and danger, or in idleness and corruption.
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You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe.
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Knock the 't' off the 'can't.'
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Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive for a man may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent qualities as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight.
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Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.
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Laws teach us to know when we commit injury and when we suffer it.
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It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend.
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Pound St. Paul's Church into atoms, and consider any single atom it is to be sure, good for nothing but put all these atoms together, and you have St. Paul's Church. So it is with human felicity, which is made up of many ingredients, each of which may be shown to be very insignificant.
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Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.
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Idleness and timidity often despair without being overcome, and forbear attempts for fear of being defeated and we may promote the invigoration of faint endeavors, by showing what has already been performed.
Samuel Johnson
A person loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal.
Samuel Johnson
From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,- Path, motive, guide, original, and end.
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Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding can expect only to improve a single science.
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An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty.
Samuel Johnson
