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You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe.

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
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Cannot
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Men
World
Lecturing
Shoe
Enable
Shoes
Teaching

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A man should be careful never to tell tales of himself to his own disadvantage. People may be amused at the time, but they will be remembered, and brought out against him upon some subsequent occasion.
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The faults of a writer of acknowledged excellence are more dangerous, because the influence of his example is more extensive and the interest of learning requires that they should be discovered and stigmatized, before they have the sanction of antiquity conferred upon them, and become precedents of indisputable authority.
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As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles.
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Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.
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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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Politeness is fictitious benevolence.
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Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it
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A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.
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Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.
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Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured.
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Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.
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Poetry cannot be translation
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It is indeed certain, that whoever attempts any common topick, will find unexpected coincidences of his thoughts with those of other writers nor can the nicest judgment always distinguish accidental similitude from artful imitation.
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They who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it.
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Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject.
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I never take a nap after dinner but when I have had a bad night, and then the nap takes me.
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Of the present state, whatever it be, we feel and are forced to confess the misery yet when the same state is again at a distance, imagination paints it as desirable.
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Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.
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The care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature.
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The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercized in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions.
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