Quote

A fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that hardly resembles a man. The value of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Bookseller
Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Make
Value
Hardly
Hack
Would
Head
Stone
Hacks
Men
Year
Fellow
Carrots
Values
Block
Resembles
Half
Fellows
Owing
Upon
Difficulty
Marble
Something
Stones
Sculpture
Statuary
Years
Cutting
Finest
Carrot

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Riches seldom make their owners rich.
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Rags will always make their appearance where they have a right to do it.
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Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new.
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Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.
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Read the book you do honestly feel a wish and curiosity to read.
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He left the name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale.
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The maxim of Cleobulus, Mediocrity is best, has been long considered a universal principle, extending through the whole compass of life and nature. The experience of every age seems to have given it new confirmation, and to show that nothing, however specious or alluring, is pursued with propriety or enjoyed with safety beyond certain limits.
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The insolence of wealth will creep out.
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Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religions hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper and deeper.
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Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance.
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I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.
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Each person's work is always a portrait of himself.
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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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I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.
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You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.
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Of riches it is not necessary to write the praise. Let it, however, be remembered that he who has money to spare has it always in his power to benefit others, and of such power a good man must always be desirous.
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To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence--an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.
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Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of language.
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Language is the dress of thought.
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Security will produce danger.
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