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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.

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
Literature
Drudge
Words
Dictionaries
Tracing
Harmless
Dictionary
Originals
Detailing
Original
Signification
Writer
Lexicographer

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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This is my history like all other histories, a narrative of misery.
Samuel Johnson
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The botanist looks upon the astronomer as a being unworthy of his regard and he that is glowing great and happy by electrifying a bottle wonders how the world can be engaged by trifling prattle about war and peace.
Samuel Johnson
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Faults and defects every work of man must have.
Samuel Johnson
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Mutual complacency is the atmosphere of conjugal love.
Samuel Johnson
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Books have always a secret influence on the understanding we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas he that reads books of science, thogh without any fixed desire of improvement, will grow more knowing.
Samuel Johnson
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All intellectual improvement arises from leisure.
Samuel Johnson
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The animadversions of critics are commonly such as may easily provoke the sedatest writer to some quickness of resentment and asperity of reply.
Samuel Johnson
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The process is the reality.
Samuel Johnson
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Cruel with guilt, and daring with despair, the midnight murderer bursts the faithless bar invades the sacred hour of silent rest and leaves, unseen, a dagger in your breast.
Samuel Johnson
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The size of a man's understanding might always be justly measured by his mirth.
Samuel Johnson
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The care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature.
Samuel Johnson
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Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other.
Samuel Johnson
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The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef love, like being enlivened with champagne.
Samuel Johnson
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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.
Samuel Johnson
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All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.
Samuel Johnson
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No man tells his opinion so freely as when he imagines it received with implicit veneration.
Samuel Johnson
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There is little peace or comfort in life if we are always anxious as to future events. He that worries himself with the dread of possible contingencies will never be at rest.
Samuel Johnson
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Never trust your tongue when your heart is bitter.
Samuel Johnson
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High people, sir, are the best take a hundred ladies of quality, you'll find them better wives, better mothers, more willing to sacrifice their own pleasures to their children, than a hundred other woman.
Samuel Johnson
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There is no idleness, by which we are so easily seduced, as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business, and by making the loiterer imagine that he has something to do which must not be neglected, keeps him in perpetual agitation, and hurries him rapidly from place to place.
Samuel Johnson