Quote

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.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Love
Modern
Otherwise
Either
Ancient
Honourable
Find
Fortune
Blindness
Without
Writers
Mention
Country
Blind
Preference
Made
Whose
Comparison
Never
Equal
Hated
Men
Virtue
Considered

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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Very few live by choice. Every man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, and with which he did not always willingly cooperate and therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbor better than his own.
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This world, where much is to be done and little to be known.
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Slander is the revenge of a coward, and dissimulation of his defense.
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Political liberty is only good insofar as it produces private liberty.
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Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.
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Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world.
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I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.
Samuel Johnson
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We all live upon the hope of pleasing somebody, and the pleasure of pleasing ought to be greatest, and at last always will be greatest, when our endeavours are exerted in consequence of our duty.
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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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He who endeavors to please must appear pleased.
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Don't tell me of deception a lie is a lie, whether it be a lie to the eye or a lie to the ear.
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It is our first duty to serve society.
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Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.
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There are occasions on which all apology is rudeness.
Samuel Johnson
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The habit of looking on the bright side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a year.
Samuel Johnson
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I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.
Samuel Johnson
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What is good only because it pleases cannot be pronounced good till it has been found to please.
Samuel Johnson
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I have always said the first Whig was the Devil.
Samuel Johnson
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To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
Samuel Johnson
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Books, says Lord Bacon, can never teach us the use of books the student must learn by commerce with mankind to reduce his speculations to practice. No man should think so highly of himself as to think he can receive but little light from books no one so meanly, as to believe he can discover nothing but what is to be learned from them.
Samuel Johnson