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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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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
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Critics

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Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse.
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When there is no hope, there can be no endeavor.
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Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.
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There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance.
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The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, were exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue.
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Attainment is followed by neglect, possession by disgust, and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to many another course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last
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Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favour.
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What is the reason that women servants ... have much lower wages than men servants ... when in fact our female house servants work much harder than the male?
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It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.
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He who fails to please in his salutation and address is at once rejected, and never obtains an opportunity of showing his latest excellences or essential qualities.
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The dependant who cultivates delicacy in himself very little consults his own tranquillity.
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Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding.
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In order that all men might be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
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Liberty is the parent of truth, but truth and decency are sometimes at variance. All men and all propositions are to be treated here as they deserve, and there are many who have no claim either to respect or decency.
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A man is not obliged honestly to answer a question which should not properly be put.
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Those that have done nothing in life, are not qualified to judge of those that have done little
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The parallel circumstances and kindred images to which we readily conform our minds are, above all other writings, to be found in the lives of particular persons, and therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography.
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I will take no more physick, not even my opiates for I have prayed that I may render up my soul to God unclouded.
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Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.
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Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge is to a forest.
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