What a strange narrowness of mind now is that, to think the things we have not known are better than the things we have known.
Samuel JohnsonFoppery 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.
Samuel JohnsonNew arts are long in the world before poets describe them; for they borrow everything from their predecessors, and commonly derive very little from nature or from life.
Samuel Johnson