Quote

Wheresoe'er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new: Endless labor all along, Endless labor to be wrong: Phrase that Time has flung away Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.

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
Nothing
Along
Phrase
Odes
Time
Strange
Trick
Disarray
Views
Phrases
Bonnets
Turn
Tricks
Uncouth
Wrong
Endless
Antique
Turns
Labor
Flung
Words
View
Antiques
Bonnet
Away
Poetry
Sonnet
Elegy

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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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.
Samuel Johnson
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Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.
Samuel Johnson
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Poverty has, in large cities, very different appearances it is often concealed in splendour, and often in extravagance.
Samuel Johnson
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I will be conquered I will not capitulate.
Samuel Johnson
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Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.
Samuel Johnson
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Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
Samuel Johnson
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Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge is to a forest.
Samuel Johnson
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We are more pained by ignorance than delighted by instruction.
Samuel Johnson
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The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth.
Samuel Johnson
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The business of a poet is to examine not the individual but the species to remark general properties and large appearances.
Samuel Johnson
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Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is but it is not easy to tell what it is.
Samuel Johnson
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To set the mind above the appetites is the end of abstinence, which one of the Fathers observes to be not a virtue, but the groundwork of virtue.
Samuel Johnson
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Among the calamities of war may be numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.
Samuel Johnson
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Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.
Samuel Johnson
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Pension: An allowance made to anyone without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.
Samuel Johnson
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Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. Every advance into knowledge opens new prospects, and produces new incitements to farther progress.
Samuel Johnson
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There should be a stated day for commemorating the birthday of our Savior, because there is danger that what may be done on any day, will be neglected.
Samuel Johnson
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Long customs are not easily broken he that attempts to change the course of his own life very often labors in vain and how shall we do that for others, which we are seldom able to do for ourselves.
Samuel Johnson
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The truly strong and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.
Samuel Johnson
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Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
Samuel Johnson