That it is vain to shrink from what cannot be avoided, and to hide that from ourselves which must sometime be found, is a truth which we all know, but which all neglect, and perhaps none more than the speculative reasoner, whose thoughts are always from home, whose eyes wander over life, whose fancy dances […]
Samuel Johnson Quotes
No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance.
We may examine, indeed, but we never can decide, because our faculties are unequal to the subject: we see a little, and form an opinion; we see more, and change it.
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
The duty of criticism is neither to depreciate nor dignify by partial representations, but to hold out the light of reason, whatever it may discover; and to promulgate the determinations of truth, whatever she shall dictate.
The learned world has always admitted the usefulness of critical disquisitions, yet he that attempts to show, however modestly, the failure of a celebrated writer, shall surely irritate his admirers, and incur the imputation of envy, captiousness, and malignity.
Criticism, though dignified from the earliest ages by the labors of men eminent for knowledge and sagacity, and, since the revival of polite literature, the favorite study of European scholars, has not yet attained the certainty and stability of science. The rules hitherto received are seldom drawn from any settled principle or self-evident postulate, or […]
We owe few of the rules of writing to the acuteness of critics, who have generally no other merit than that, having read the works of great authors with attention, they have observed the arrangement of their matter, or the grace of their expression, and then expected honor and reverence for precepts which they never […]
Critics ought never to be consulted, but while errors may yet be rectified or insipidity suppressed. But when the book has once been dismissed into the world, and can be no more retouched, I know not whether a very different conduct should not be prescribed, and whether firmness and spirit may not sometimes be of […]
The animadversions of critics are commonly such as may easily provoke the sedatest writer to some quickness of resentment and asperity of reply.
