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81 " If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance. "
― Samuel Johnson
82 " Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable. "
83 " Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult. "
84 " The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning. "
85 " Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not. "
86 " Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise. "
87 " Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. "
88 " It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust. "
89 " One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts. "
90 " That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature. The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing. That the mingled drama may convey all the instruction of tragedy or comedy cannot be denied, because it includes both in its alterations of exhibition, and approaches nearer than either to the appearance of life, by shewing how great machinations and slender designs may promote or obviate one another, and the high and the low co-operate in the general system by unavoidable concatenation. "
― Samuel Johnson , Preface to Shakespeare
91 " Nothing [...] will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome. "
― Samuel Johnson , The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
92 " Courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other. "
93 " Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments; any enlargement of wishes is therefore equally destructive to happiness with the diminution of possession, and he that teaches another to long for what he never shall obtain is no less an enemy to his quiet than if he had robbed him of part of his patrimony. "
― Samuel Johnson , The Rambler
94 " In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness."(On the Bravery of the English Common Soldiers) "
― Samuel Johnson , Works of Samuel Johnson
95 " He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything. "
96 " a hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has, for twenty years, diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and, with tea, welcomes the morning. "
97 " To talk in public, to think in solitude, to read and to hear, to enquire and answer enquiries, is the business of a scholar. He wanders about the world without pomp or terror, and is neither known nor valued but by men like himself. "
98 " Claret is the liquor for boys, port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy. "
99 " Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler "
100 " The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life. "