Quote

If in an actor there appears an utter vacancy of meaning, a frigid equality, a stupid languor, a torpid apathy, the greatest kindness that can be shown him is a speedy sentence of expulsion.

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
Equality
Expulsion
Sentences
Frigid
Kindness
Vacancy
Meaning
Apathy
Actor
Utter
Stupid
Shown
Torpid
Greatest
Sentence
Languor
Actors
Appears
Speedy

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The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in a few words.
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Sir, if a man has a mind to prance, he must study at Christ Church and All Souls.
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I remember a passage in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.
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...it will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor.
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But to the particular species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some early conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and emulation.
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The whole power of cunning is privative to say nothing, and to do nothing , is the utmost of its reach. Yet men, thus narrow by nature and mean by art, are sometimes able to rise by the miscarriages of bravery and the openness of integrity, and, watching failures and snatching opportunities, obtain advantages which belong to higher characters.
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It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called, by the generality of mankind, a particular genius.
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The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.
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Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.
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We are more pained by ignorance than delighted by instruction.
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Love is only one of many passions.
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Those who are in the power of evil habits must conquer them as they can and conquered they must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be attained: but those who are not yet subject to their influence may, by timely caution, preserve their freedom.
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The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
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Mutual complacency is the atmosphere of conjugal love.
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The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.
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Example is always more efficacious than precept.
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No man sympathizes with the sorrows of vanity.
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No man likes to live under the eye of perpetual disapprobation.
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People have now a-days got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do as much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken.
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