Pity is not natural to man. Children are always cruel. Savages are alw…

Samuel Johnson
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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. ✨ Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and Johnson's Diary of a Journey Into North Wales.
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There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money. ✨ In James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 2, p. 323 (27 March 1775)
Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, roll darkly down the torrent of his fate. ✨ Samuel Johnson, The Vanity Of Human Wishes
Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay an author.
I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom. ✨ James Boswell, Samuel Johnson … ▶
Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other. ✨ Samuel Johnson … ▶

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