Samuel Johnson Quotes
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Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you.
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Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies.
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What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.
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The true, strong, and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.
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He that overvalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.
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I am inclined to believe that few attacks either of ridicule or invective make much noise, but by the help of those they provoke.
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He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dullness in others.
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A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.
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Let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.
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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 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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The Churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.
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Words are men's daughters, but God's sons are things.
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If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.
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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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He left the name at which the world grew pale,To point a moral, or adorn a tale.
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The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life.
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A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.
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A desire for knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every human being, whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all he has to get knowledge.
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The endearing elegance of female friendship.
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The act of writing itself distracts the thoughts, and what is read twice is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed.
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Hunting was the labour of the savages of North America, but the amusement of the gentlemen of England.
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Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.
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By Numbers here from Shame or Censure free,All Crimes are safe, but hated Poverty.This, only this, the rigid Law persues,This, only this, provokes the snarling Muse.