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It is indeed not easy to distinguish affectation from habit he that has once studiously developed a style, rarely writes afterwards with complete ease.

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
Complete
Studiously
Indeed
Affectation
Habit
Distinguish
Style
Afterwards
Easy
Writes
Writing
Rarely
Developed
Ease

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I have always said the first Whig was the Devil.
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They make a rout about universal liberty, without considering that all that is to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty.
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Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet.
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Merit rather enforces respect than attracts fondness.
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How can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false? Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives
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Life of Ages, richly poured, Love of God unspent and free, Flowing in the Prophet's word And the People's liberty! Never was to chosen race That unstinted tide confined Thine is every time and place, Fountain sweet of heart and mind!
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You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
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If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim.
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There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?
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Applause abates diligence.
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Quotation is a good thing, there is a community of thought in it.
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The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.
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Every man is of importance to himself.
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Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness for great things cannot have escaped former observation.
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No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.... There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government.
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One of the amusements of idleness is reading without fatigue of close attention and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read.
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You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe.
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Whatever is formed for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity.
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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.
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The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.
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