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Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
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Critics
Formidable
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Criticism
Idleness
Nature
Weak
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May
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Expense
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Study
Vanity
Men
Grows
Ignorant
Small
Keeps

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There are certain topicks which are never exhausted. Of some images and sentiments the mind of man may be said to be enamoured it meets them, however often they occur, with the same ardour which a lover feels at the sight of his mistress, and parts from them with the same regret when they can no longer be enjoyed.
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The belief of immortality is impressed upon all men, and all men act under an impression of it, however they may talk, and though, perhaps, they may be scarcely sensible of it.
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No evil is insupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong.
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Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship.
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Language is the dress of thought.
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The mere power of saving what is already in our hands must be of easy acquisition to every mind and as the example of Lord Bacon may show that the highest intellect cannot safely neglect it, a thousand instances every day prove that the humblest may practise it with success.
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Inquiries into the heart are not for man.
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Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his home town: yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life and as nothing is little to him that feels it with gre
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I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.
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It is man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.
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Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.
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Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal.
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These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes.
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It is wonderful what a difference learning makes upon people even in the common intercourse of life, which does not appear to be much connected with it.
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Exert your talents, and distinguish yourself, and don't think of retiring from the world, until the world will be sorry that you retire.
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Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.
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Whatever professes to benefit by pleasing must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply something sudden and unexpected that which elevates must always surprise.
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There are, indeed, few kinds of composition from which an author, however learned or ingenious, can hope a long continuance of fame.
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Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, I did not give it to the man, but to humanity.
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