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Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness for great things cannot have escaped former observation.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Lichfield
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Dr Johnson
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal.
Samuel Johnson
Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.
Samuel Johnson
It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination.
Samuel Johnson
Attack is the reaction. I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds.
Samuel Johnson
Large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most common topics of falsehood.
Samuel Johnson
You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe.
Samuel Johnson
In general those parents have the most reverence who most deserve it for he that lives well cannot be despised.
Samuel Johnson
There is a certain race of men that either imagine it their duty, or make it their amusement, to hinder the reception of every work of learning or genius, who stand as sentinels in the avenues of fame, and value themselves upon giving Ignorance and Envy the first notice of a prey.
Samuel Johnson
Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.
Samuel Johnson
[The poet] must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place.
Samuel Johnson
The insolence of wealth will creep out.
Samuel Johnson
Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. Every advance into knowledge opens new prospects, and produces new incitements to farther progress.
Samuel Johnson
You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.
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The business of a poet is to examine not the individual but the species to remark general properties and large appearances.
Samuel Johnson
He who sees different ways to the same end, will, unless he watches carefully over his own conduct, lay out too much of his attention upon the comparison of probabilities and the adjustment of expedients, and pause in the choice of his road, till some accident intercepts his journey.
Samuel Johnson
In civilized society we all depend upon each other, and our happiness is very much owing to the good opinion of mankind.
Samuel Johnson
A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.
Samuel Johnson
He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.
Samuel Johnson
Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of language.
Samuel Johnson
As the faculty of writing has chiefly been a masculine endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has always been thrown upon the women.
Samuel Johnson
