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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
Lexicographer
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
Teacher
Translator
Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Support
Critics
Formidable
Names
Criticism
Idleness
Nature
Weak
Critic
May
Grow
Expense
Important
Name
Expenses
Made
Study
Vanity
Men
Grows
Ignorant
Small
Keeps

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Those who will not take the trouble to think for themselves, have always somebody that thinks for them and the difficulty in writing is to please those from whom others learn to be pleased.
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Pain is less subject than pleasure to careless expression.
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The drama's laws the drama's patrons give. For we that live to please must please to live.
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To fix the thoughts by writing, and subject them to frequent examinations and reviews, is the best method of enabling the mind to detect its own sophisms, and keep it on guard against the fallacies which it practices on others
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No evil is insupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong.
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It is our first duty to serve society.
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Profuseness is a cruel and crafty demon, that gradually involves her followers in dependence and debt that is, fetters them with irons that enter into their souls.
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All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance.
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The difference between coarse and refined abuse is the difference between being bruised by a club and wounded by a poisoned arrow.
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Languages are the pedigree of nations.
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None can be pleased without praise, and few can be praised without falsehood.
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What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
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There ambush here relentless ruffians lay, And here the fell attorney prowls for prey.
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Whatever you have spend less.
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Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage.
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I am a friend to subordination, as most conducive to the happiness of society. There is a reciprocal pleasure in governing and being governed.
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He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience. We have always protected the Americans we may therefore subject them to government.
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Who left nothing of authorship untouched, and touched nothing which he did not adorn. [Lat., Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.]
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No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.
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Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.
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