Samuel Johnson Quotes
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I'll come no more behind your scenes, David Garrick; for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities.
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We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
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What is easy is seldom excellent.
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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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Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and... the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.
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How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?
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Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.
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Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
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Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.
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In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.
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That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?
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He that overvalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.
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A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.
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There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.
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This mournful truth is ev'rywhere confessed - Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed.
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I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.
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But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in few words.
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When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.
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No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
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Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.
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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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The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
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I do not know, sir, that the fellow is an infidel; but if he be an infidel, he is an infidel as a dog is an infidel; that is to say, he has never thought upon the subject.
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Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.