"It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage."
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Quote collection
Samuel Johnson quotes (page 35 of 88)
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"Words are daughters of earth but ideas are sons of heaven."
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"What is good only because it pleases cannot be pronounced good till it has been found to please."
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"The love of fame is a passion natural and universal, which no man, however high or mean, however wise or ignorant, was yet able to despise."
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"None of the projects or designs which exercise the mind of man are equally subject to obstructions and disappointments with the pursuit of fame."
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"He that is pushing his predecessors into the gulf of obscurity, cannot but sometimes suspect, that he must himself sink in like manner, and, as he stands upon the same precipice, be swept away with the same violence."
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"Still we love The evil we do, until we suffer it."
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"Spite and ill-nature are among the most expensive luxuries in life."
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"That what cannot be repaired is not to be regretted."
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"Leave to Heaven the measure and the choice."
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"Let us be quick to repent of injuries while repentance may not be a barren anguish."
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"The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendor cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate."
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"He that shall peruse the political pamphlets of any past reign will wonder why they were so eagerly read, or so loudly praised."
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"If misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill-fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced."
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"Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners."
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"Every human being whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge."
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"Presumption will be easily corrected; but timidity is a disease of the mind more obstinate and fatal."
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"The necessary connexion of representatives with taxes, seems to have sunk deep into many of those minds, that admit sounds, without their meaning."
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"Suspicion is very often a useless pain."
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"Whatever professes to benefit by pleasing must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply something sudden and unexpected; that which elevates must always surprise."
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