"Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment."
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Quote collection
Samuel Johnson quotes (page 76 of 88)
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"It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession."
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"Philips, whose touch harmonious could remove The pangs of guilty power and hapless love! Rest here, distress'd by poverty no more; Here find that calm thou gav'st so oft before; Sleep undisturb'd within this peaceful shrine, Till angels wake thee with a note like thine!"
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"Men hate more steadily than they love."
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"The finest landscape in the world is improved by a good inn in the foreground."
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"He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into the short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind."
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"Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new."
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"A man is not obliged honestly to answer a question which should not properly be put."
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"Those who attempt nothing themselves think every thing easily performed, and consider the unsuccessful always as criminal."
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"All industry must be excited by hope."
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"No man can perform so little as not to have reason to congratulate himself on his merits, when he beholds the multitude that live in total idleness, and have never yet endeavoured to be useful."
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"The traveler that resolutely follows a rough and winding path will sooner reach the end of his journey than he that is always changing his direction, and wastes the hour of daylight in looking for smoother ground and shorter passages."
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"A soldier's time is passed in distress and danger, or in idleness and corruption."
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"Men go to sea, before they know the unhappiness of that way of life; and when they have come to know it, they cannot escape from it, because it is then too late to choose another profession; as indeed is generally the case with men, when they have once engaged in any particular way of life."
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"A ship is worse than a gaol. There is, in a gaol, better air, better company, better conveniency of every kind; and a ship has the additional disadvantage of of being in danger."
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"When the eye or the imagination is struck with an uncommon work, the next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it was performed"
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"The liberty of using harmless pleasure will not be disputed; but it is still to be examined what pleasures are harmless."
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"An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty. Men who have practiced tortures on animals without pity, relating them without shame, how can they still hold their heads among human beings?"
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"Every government is perpetually degenerating towards corruption, from which it must be rescued at certain periods by the resuscitation of its first principles, and the re-establishment of its original constitution."
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"When a Man is tried of London, he is tired of life."
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