Samuel Johnson Quotes
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Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
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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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No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
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Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies.
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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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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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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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A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.
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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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Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.
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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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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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He left the name at which the world grew pale,To point a moral, or adorn a tale.
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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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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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He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dullness in others.
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There Poetry shall tune her sacred voice,And wake from ignorance the Western World.
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Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility.
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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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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.
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He was a very good hater.
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Words are men's daughters, but God's sons are things.
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The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life.