Samuel Johnson quotes · page 5

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Samuel Johnson

Society
Small debts are like small gun shot; they are rattling around us on all sides and one can scarcely escape being wounded. Large debts are like canons, they produce a loud noise, but are of little danger.
3.3 · 12 votes · 82 reads
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Time
So different are the colors of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past; and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally
5.0 · 22 votes · 21 reads
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Various
Solitude is dangerous to reason, without being favorable to virtue. Remember that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad.
4.7 · 60 votes · 58 reads
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Thought and Reason
Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.
3.6 · 28 votes · 46 reads
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Feelings
Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion.
4.2 · 11 votes · 151 reads
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Feelings
Sorrow is the rust of the soul and activity will cleanse and brighten it.
4.6 · 64 votes · 36 reads
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Various
Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.
4.9 · 64 votes · 185 reads
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Society
Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again. The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.
4.9 · 20 votes · 12 reads
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Defects
Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.
4.2 · 9 votes · 4 reads
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Various
That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.
4.0 · 49 votes · 35 reads
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Various
The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.
4.0 · 51 votes · 128 reads
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Time
The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket; a very few names may be considered as perpetual lamps that shine unconsumed.
4.4 · 5 votes · 71 reads
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Various
The chains of habit are generally too weak to be felt, until they are too strong to be broken.
4.4 · 54 votes · 113 reads
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Feelings
The endearing elegance of female friendship.
3.0 · 23 votes · 163 reads
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Time
The future is purchased by the present.
4.4 · 53 votes · 46 reads
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Art and Culture
The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.
3.5 · 49 votes · 55 reads
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Various
The habit of looking on the best side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a years.
4.1 · 48 votes · 149 reads
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Thought and Reason
The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered but a general effect of pleasing impression.
4.8 · 60 votes · 133 reads
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Feelings
The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.
4.1 · 55 votes · 2 reads
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Thought and Reason
The majority have no other reason for their opinions than that they are the fashion.
3.5 · 13 votes · 35 reads
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Feelings
The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.
4.3 · 45 votes · 138 reads
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Feelings
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
3.6 · 33 votes · 13 reads
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Virtues
The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.
3.1 · 22 votes · 69 reads
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Virtues
The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.
3.0 · 38 votes · 1 reads
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Thought and Reason
The Supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things - the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.
4.7 · 24 votes · 7 reads
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Art and Culture
The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public e
4.0 · 26 votes · 147 reads
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Thought and Reason
The true art of memory is the art of attention.
3.2 · 58 votes · 17 reads
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Art and Culture
The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
3.5 · 11 votes · 96 reads
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Various
The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
4.3 · 17 votes · 145 reads
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Feelings
The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected, and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be super added.
4.4 · 5 votes · 183 reads
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Feelings
The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.
3.9 · 26 votes · 56 reads
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Art and Culture
Their learning is like bread in a besieged town: every man gets a little, but no man gets a full meal.
3.7 · 16 votes · 139 reads
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Virtues
There are charms made only for distance admiration.
4.9 · 17 votes · 144 reads
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Thought and Reason
There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.
3.7 · 55 votes · 155 reads
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Feelings
There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.
3.9 · 37 votes · 60 reads
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Society
There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.
3.1 · 61 votes · 153 reads
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Virtues
There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.
3.7 · 64 votes · 31 reads
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Society
There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.
3.0 · 42 votes · 179 reads
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Feelings
There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.
4.5 · 29 votes · 21 reads
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Feelings
There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.
3.6 · 43 votes · 196 reads
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Page 5 of 6 · 230 quotes

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