The authors that in any nation last from age to age are very few, because there are very few that have any other claim to notice than that they catch hold on present curiosity, and gratify some accidental desire, or produce some temporary conveniency.
Samuel JohnsonThere is no book so poor that it would not be a prodigy if wholly made by a single man.
Samuel JohnsonAmong other pleasing errors of young minds is the opinion of their own importance. He that has not yet remarked, how little attention his contemporaries can spare from themselves, conceives all eyes turned upon himself, and imagines everyone that approaches him to be an enemy or a follower, an admirer or a spy.
Samuel JohnsonAll censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare.
Samuel Johnson