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An epithet or metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art an epithet or metaphor drawn from art degrades nature.

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
Degrade
Metaphor
Drawn
Art
Nature
Ennobles
Epithet
Degrades

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.
Samuel Johnson
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Those whose abilities or knowledge incline them most to deviate from the general round of life are recalled from eccentricity by the laws of their existence.
Samuel Johnson
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When we see our enemies and friends gliding away before us, let us not forget that we are subject to the general law of mortality, and shall soon be where our doom will be fixed forever.
Samuel Johnson
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As all error is meanness, it is incumbent on every man who consults his own dignity, to retract it as soon as he discovers it.
Samuel Johnson
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Each person's work is always a portrait of himself.
Samuel Johnson
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It is a hopeless endeavour to unite the contrarieties of spring and winter it is unjust to claim the privileges of age, and retain the play-things of childhood.
Samuel Johnson
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While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.
Samuel Johnson
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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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We never do anything consciously for the last time without sadness of heart.
Samuel Johnson
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No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.
Samuel Johnson
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To be of no Church is dangerous.
Samuel Johnson
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If we estimate dignity by immediate usefulness, agriculture is undoubtedly the first and noblest science.
Samuel Johnson
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Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding.
Samuel Johnson
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As to the rout that is made about people who are ruined by extravagance, it is no matter to the nation that some individuals suffer. When so much general productive exertion is the consequence of luxury, the nation does not care though there are debtors nay, they would not care though their creditors were there too.
Samuel Johnson
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A soldier's time is passed in distress and danger, or in idleness and corruption.
Samuel Johnson
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If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur.
Samuel Johnson
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Any of us would kill a cow rather than not have beef.
Samuel Johnson
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The wickedness of a loose or profane author is more atrocious than that of a giddy libertine or drunken ravisher, not only because it extends its effects wider, as a pestilence that taints the air is more destructive than poison infused in a draught, but because it is committed with cool deliberation.
Samuel Johnson
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Everybody loves to have things which please the palate put in their way, without trouble or preparation.
Samuel Johnson
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Too much vigor in the beginning of an undertaking often intercepts and prevents the steadiness and perseverance always necessary in the conduct of a complicated scheme.
Samuel Johnson