"Too much vigor in the beginning of an undertaking often intercepts and prevents the steadiness and perseverance always necessary in the conduct of a complicated scheme."
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Quote collection
Samuel Johnson quotes (page 19 of 88)
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"When a friend is carried to his grave, we at once find excuses for every weakness, and palliation of every fault. We recollect a thousand endearments, which before glided off our minds without impression, a thousand favors unrepaid, a thousand duties unperformed; and wish, vainly wish, for his return, not so much that we may receive as that we may bestow happiness, and recompense that kindness which before we never understood."
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"Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past without looking forward to the future."
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"Mutual complacency is the atmosphere of conjugal love."
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"The charm of London is that you are never glad or sorry for ten minutes together; in the country you are one or the other for weeks."
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"The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay."
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"To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution."
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"Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed."
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"No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library."
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"Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed."
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"A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still."
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"There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman."
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"It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability."
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"Knowledge always desires increase, it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself."
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"There is less flogging in our great schools than formerly-but then less is learned there; so what the boys get at one end they lose at the other."
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"The size of a man's understanding might always be justly measured by his mirth."
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"Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels, but they live like men."
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"Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing."
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"Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas."
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"No mind is much employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments."
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