"He who aspires to be a serious wine drinker must drink claret."
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Quote collection
Samuel Johnson quotes (page 51 of 88)
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"Genius is that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates."
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"Every other enjoyment malice may destroy; every other panegyric envy may withhold; but no human power can deprive the boaster of his own encomiums."
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"A man who is good enough to go to heaven is good enough to be a clergyman."
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"Pity is not natural to man. Children are always cruel. Savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason. We may have uneasy sensations from seeing a creature in distress, without pity; for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them."
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"Avarice is always poor."
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"Nothing is more common than mutual dislike, where mutual approbation is particularly expected."
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"How can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false? Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives"
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"Ah! Sir, a boy's being flogged is not so severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him."
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"Misery is caused for the most part, not by a heavy crush of disaster, but by the corrosion of less visible evils, which canker enjoyment, and undermine security. The visit of an invader is necessarily rare, but domestic animosities allow no cessation."
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"As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time; but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law; that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles."
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"Sleep undisturbed within this peaceful shrine, Till angels wake thee with a note like thine."
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"A blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another."
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"Accustom your children constantly to this; if a thing happened at one window and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end"
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"Was ever poet so trusted before?"
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"Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea."
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"A man guilty of poverty easily believes himself suspected."
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"It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous."
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"Luxury, so far as it reaches the people, will do good to the race of people; it will strengthen and multiply them. Sir, no nation was ever hurt by luxury; for, as I said before; it can reach but a very few."
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"Among the numerous requisites that must concur to complete an author, few are of more importance than an early entrance into the living world. The seed of knowledge may be planted in solitude, but must be cultivated in public. Argumentation may be taught in colleges, and theories formed in retirement; but the artifice of embellishment and the powers of attraction can be gained only by a general converse."
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