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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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Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
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Aristotle
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Instituted

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No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.
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Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.
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Every other author may aspire to praise the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.
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The lust of gold succeeds the rage of conquest The lust of gold, unfeeling and remorseless! The last corruption of degenerate man.
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I am willing to love all of mankind, except an American.
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You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.
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We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
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Example is always more efficacious than precept.
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It is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the chastity of a wife.
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Babies do not want to hear about babies they like to be told of giants and castles.
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It is better to live rich than to die rich.
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There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
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He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
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Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.
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I remember a passage in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.
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Remember that nothing will supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity long continued will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible.
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Rain is good for vegetables, and for the animals who eat those vegetables, and for the animals who eat those animals.
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I have no more pleasure in hearing a man attempting wit and failing, than in seeing a man trying to leap over a ditch and tumbling into it
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He who endeavors to please must appear pleased.
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Still we love The evil we do, until we suffer it.
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