When a language begins to teem with books, it is tending to refinement; as those who undertake to teach others must have undergone some labour in improving themselves, they set a proportionate value on their own thoughts, and wish to enforce them by efficacious expressions; speech becomes embodied and permanent; different modes and phrases are compared, and the best obtains an establishment. By degrees one age improves upon another. ✨ Samuel Johnson (1810). The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An essay on his life and genius, p.349
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- The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape. ✨ Samuel Johnson (2014). The Letters of Samuel Johnson, Volume II: 177 … ▶
- I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little. ✨ Letter to Lord Chesterfield, in James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 1, p. … ▶
- Every man has frequent grievances which only the solicitude of friendship will discover and remedy, and which would remain for ever unheeded in the mighty heap of human calamity, were it only surveye … ▶
- 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. … ▶
- In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath. ✨ In James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 2, p. 407 (1775)
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