Samuel Johnson Quotes
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Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.
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There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified, and new prejudices to be opposed.
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The poet must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place.
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What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
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In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.
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Mrs. Montagu has dropt me. Now, Sir, there are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by.
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He that overvalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.
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I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.
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There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.
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I refute it thus.
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Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility.
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As I know more of mankind, I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man, upon easier terms than I was formerly.
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The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth.
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Hawkesworth said of Johnson, 'You have a memory that would convict any author of plagiarism in any court of literature in the world.'
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Sir, your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.
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No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.
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'Paradise Lost' is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.
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Ah! let not Censure term our fate our choice, The stage but echoes back the public's voice; The drama's laws the drama's patrons give, For we that live to please must please to live.
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He left the name at which the world grew pale,To point a moral, or adorn a tale.
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Round numbers are always false.
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The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.
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The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.
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Sir, what is Poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is: but it is not easy to tell what it is.
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Words are men's daughters, but God's sons are things.