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The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.
Samuel Johnson
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A man will turn over half a library to make one book.
Samuel Johnson
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Love is only one of many passions.
Samuel Johnson
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We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
Samuel Johnson
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Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.
Samuel Johnson
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The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.
Samuel Johnson
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The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.
Samuel Johnson
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A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.
Samuel Johnson
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Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
Samuel Johnson
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To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.
Samuel Johnson
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It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.
Samuel Johnson
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The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.
Samuel Johnson
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When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.
Samuel Johnson
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Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.
Samuel Johnson
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I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.
Samuel Johnson
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No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.
Samuel Johnson
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There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.
Samuel Johnson
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Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.
Samuel Johnson
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It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.
Samuel Johnson
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Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.
Samuel Johnson
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It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.
Samuel Johnson
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No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.
Samuel Johnson
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I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
Samuel Johnson
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Here closed in death th' attentive eyesThat saw the manners in the face.
Samuel Johnson
