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I never have sought the world; the world was not to seek me.
Samuel Johnson -
Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
Samuel Johnson
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It might as well be said, 'Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.'
Samuel Johnson -
Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.
Samuel Johnson -
EXCISE - A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.
Samuel Johnson -
Come, let me know what it is that makes a Scotchman happy!
Samuel Johnson -
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.
Samuel Johnson -
NETWORK - Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.
Samuel Johnson
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God bless you, my dear!
Samuel Johnson -
I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.
Samuel Johnson -
If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim.
Samuel Johnson -
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
Samuel Johnson -
I know not whether more is to be dreaded from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from garrets filled with scribblers accustomed to lies.
Samuel Johnson -
It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.
Samuel Johnson
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I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.
Samuel Johnson -
Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.
Samuel Johnson -
To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.
Samuel Johnson -
He was a very good hater.
Samuel Johnson -
I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.
Samuel Johnson -
A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian,Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched,And touched nothing that he did not adorn.
Samuel Johnson
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Then with no throbs of fiery pain,No cold gradations of decay,Death broke at once the vital chain,And freed his soul the nearest way.
Samuel Johnson -
The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.
Samuel Johnson -
From Thee, great God: we spring, to Thee we tend,Path, motive, guide, original, and end.
Samuel Johnson -
An age that melts in unperceiv'd decay,And glides in modest innocence away.
Samuel Johnson