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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
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
If we estimate dignity by immediate usefulness, agriculture is undoubtedly the first and noblest science.
Samuel Johnson
Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free.
Samuel Johnson
The authors that in any nation last from age to age are very few, because there are very few that have any other claim to notice than that they catch hold on present curiosity, and gratify some accidental desire, or produce some temporary conveniency.
Samuel Johnson
Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge is to a forest.
Samuel Johnson
A man is not obliged honestly to answer a question which should not properly be put.
Samuel Johnson
Unless a woman has an amorous heart, she is a dull companion.
Samuel Johnson
Every man, however hopeless his pretensions may appear, has some project by which he hopes to rise to reputation some art by which he imagines that the attention of the world will be attracted some quality, good or bad, which discriminates him from the common herd of mortals, and by which others may be persuaded to love, or compelled to fear him.
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Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
Samuel Johnson
He left the name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale.
Samuel Johnson
Life is but short no time can be afforded but for the indulgence of real sorry, or contests upon questions seriously momentous. Let us not throw away any of our days upon useless resentment, or contend who shall hold out longest in stubborn malignity. It is best not to be angry and best, in the next place, to be quickly reconciled.
Samuel Johnson
Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.
Samuel Johnson
The violence of war admits no distinction the lance, that is lifted at guilt and power, will sometimes fall on innocence and gentleness.
Samuel Johnson
Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.
Samuel Johnson
He that wishes to see his country robbed of its rights cannot be a patriot.
Samuel Johnson
An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty.
Samuel Johnson
A blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another.
Samuel Johnson
Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.
Samuel Johnson
The size of a man's understanding might always be justly measured by his mirth.
Samuel Johnson
There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.
Samuel Johnson
Tea's proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.
Samuel Johnson