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As any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice.

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
Opinion
Innovate
Grows
Perish
Practice
Custom
Words
Expressed
Must
Customs
Proportion
Popular
Speech
Alters

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There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.
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To be free it is not enough to beat the system, one must beat the system every day
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Pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself
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All imposture weakens confidence and chills benevolence.
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If misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced if of ill-fortune, to be pitied and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced.
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There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.
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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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It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.
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We often need reminding even if we do not often need educating.
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Attention and respect give pleasure, however late, or however useless. But they are not useless, when they are late, it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.
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Such is the constitution of Man that labor may be said to be its own re-ward.
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Our senses, our appetite, and our passions are our lawful and faithful guides in things that relate solely to this life.
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No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.... There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government.
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None but a fool worries about things he cannot influence.
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Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. Every advance into knowledge opens new prospects, and produces new incitements to farther progress.
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The most useful truths are always universal, and unconnected with accidents and customs.
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Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order. - John V. Lindsay No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.
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Those authors are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence.
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One of the aged greatest miseries is that they cannot easily find a companion able to share the memories of the past.
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The mere power of saving what is already in our hands must be of easy acquisition to every mind and as the example of Lord Bacon may show that the highest intellect cannot safely neglect it, a thousand instances every day prove that the humblest may practise it with success.
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