Quote

As any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice.

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
Grows
Perish
Practice
Custom
Words
Expressed
Must
Customs
Proportion
Popular
Speech
Alters
Opinion
Innovate

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The Irish are a fair people: They never speak well of one another.
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No man can perform so little as not to have reason to congratulate himself on his merits, when he beholds the multitude that live in total idleness, and have never yet endeavoured to be useful.
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Whatever advantage we snatch beyond a certain portion allotted us by at nature, is like money spent before it is due, which, at the time of regular payment, will be missed and regretted.
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Philosophy has often attempted to repress insolence by asserting that all conditions are leveled by death a position which, however it may defect the happy, will seldom afford much comfort to the wretched.
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We never do anything consciously for the last time without sadness of heart.
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If one was to think constantly of death, the business of life would stand still
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You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.
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Foppery is never cured it is the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, are never rectified once a coxcomb always a coxcomb.
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Every man's affairs, however little, are important to himself.
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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.
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The violence of war admits no distinction the lance, that is lifted at guilt and power, will sometimes fall on innocence and gentleness.
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Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet. From those sounds which we hear on small or on coarse occasions, we do not easily receive strong impressions, or delightful images and words to which we are nearly strangers, whenever they occur, draw that attention on themselves which they should transmit to other things.
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He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
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Languages are the pedigree of nations.
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Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new.
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This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, slow rises worth by poverty depressed.
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Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such, We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much Who, born for the Universe, narrowed his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.
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Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
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Wealth is nothing in itself it is not useful but when it departs from us.
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If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.
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