"Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get."
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Quote collection
Samuel Johnson quotes (page 56 of 88)
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"Lichfield, England. Swallows certainly sleep all winter. A number of them conglobulate together, by flying round and round, and then all in a heap throw themselves under water, and lye in the bed of a river."
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"Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness."
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"Without good humour, learning and bravery can only confer that superiority which swells the heart of the lion in the desert, where he roars without reply, and ravages without resistance. Without good humour virtue may awe by its dignity and amaze by its brightness, but must always be viewed at a distance, and will scarcely gain a friend or attract an imitator."
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"We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass."
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"There is reason to suspect, that the distinctions of mankind have more show than value, when it is found that all agree to be weary alike of pleasures and of cares; that the powerful and the weak, the celebrated and obscure, join in one common wish, and implore from nature's hand the nectar of oblivion."
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"Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young."
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"Books, says Lord Bacon, can never teach us the use of books; the student must learn by commerce with mankind to reduce his speculations to practice. No man should think so highly of himself as to think he can receive but little light from books; no one so meanly, as to believe he can discover nothing but what is to be learned from them."
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"A voyage to the moon, however romantick and absurd the scheme may now appear, since the properties of air have been better understood, seemed highly probable to many of the aspiring wits in the last century"
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"The highest panegyric, therefore, that private virtue can receive, is the praise of servants."
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"It is common to overlook what is near by keeping the eye fixed on something remote."
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"In this work are exhibited, in a very high degree, the two most engaging powers of an author. New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new."
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"Life protracted is protracted woe."
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"A book should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it."
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"Virtue is too often merely local."
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"Quotation is a good thing, there is a community of thought in it."
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"The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute."
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"He who would govern his actions by the laws of virtue must regulate his thoughts by those of reason."
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"Parents are by no means exempt from the intoxication of dominion."
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"We go from anticipation to anticipation, not from satisfaction to satisfaction."
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