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Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
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Aristotle
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If in an actor there appears an utter vacancy of meaning, a frigid equality, a stupid languor, a torpid apathy, the greatest kindness that can be shown him is a speedy sentence of expulsion.
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I inherited a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.
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The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
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There is nothing so minute, or inconsiderable, that I would not rather know it than not.
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To go and see one druidical temple is only to see that it is nothing, for there is neither art nor power in it and seeing one is quite enough.
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Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.
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There is ... scarcely any species of writing of which we can tell what is its essence, and what are its constituents every new genius produces some innovation, which, when invented and approved, subverts the rules which the practice of foregoing authors had established.
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Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.
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Art hath an enemy called ignorance.
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Stand Firm for your country, and become a man Honour'd and lov'd: It were a noble life, To be found dead, embracing her.
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The desires of man increase with his acquisitions.
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There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.
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A book should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it.
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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.
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A person loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal.
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You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.
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The gloomy and the resentful are always found among those who have nothing to do or who do nothing.
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Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.
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Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent.
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To build is to be robbed.
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