Samuel Johnson Quotes
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A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.
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If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.
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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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Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
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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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Hunting was the labour of the savages of North America, but the amusement of the gentlemen of England.
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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 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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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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No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
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There Poetry shall tune her sacred voice,And wake from ignorance the Western World.
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The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.
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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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In misery's darkest cavern known,His useful care was ever nighWhere hopeless anguish pour'd his groan,And lonely want retir'd to die.
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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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He left the name at which the world grew pale,To point a moral, or adorn a tale.
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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 was a very good hater.
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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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Officious, innocent, sincere,Of every friendless name the friend.
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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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Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.
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He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dullness in others.