Mediocrity Quotes
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107. Dullness; Mediocrity; Ouch!!!
He attacked Gray, calling him "a dull fellow." Boswell: I understand he was reserved, and might appear dull in company; but surely he was not dull in poetry." Johnson: "Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him GREAT. He was a mechanical poet."
Boswell: Life
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244. Mediocrity; Popularity
"Is getting a hundred thousand pounds a proof of excellence? That has been done by a scoundrel commissary."
Boswell: Life
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982. Argument; Inconclusiveness; Mediocrity; Ouch!!!
Johnson, for sport perhaps, or from the spirit of contradiction, eagerly maintained that Derrick had merit as a writer. Mr. Morgan argued with him directly, in vain. At length he had recourse to this device. "Pray, Sir, (said he,) whether do you reckon Derrick or Smart the best poet?" Johnson at once felt himself rouzed; and answered, "Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea."
Boswell: Life of Johnson
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1,086. Fashion; Mediocrity; Obscurity; Op-Ed; Writing
"Of the innumerable authors whose performances are thus treasured up in magnificent obscurity [in a library], most are forgotten, because they never deserved to be remembered, and owed the honours which they once obtained, not to judgment or to genius, to labour or to art, but to the prejudice of faction, the strategems of intrigue, or the servility of adulation. Nothing is more common than to find men, whose works are now totally neglected, mentioned with praises by their contemporaries as the oracles of their age, and the legislators of science."
Johnson: Rambler #106 (March 23, 1751)
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1,087. Mediocrity; Obscurity
"Nothing is more common than to find men, whose works are now totally neglected, mentioned with praises by their contemporaries as the oracles of their age, and the legislators of science. Curiosity is naturally excited, their volumes after long inquiry are found, but seldom reward the labour of the search. Every period of time has produced these bubbles of artificial fame, which are kept up a while by the breath of fashion, and then break at once, and are annihilated."
Johnson: Rambler #106 (March 23, 1751)
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1,088. Fashion; Mediocrity; Op-Ed; Popularity; Reading; Writing
"Among those whose reputation is exhausted in a short time by its own luxuriance are the writers who take advantage of present incidents or characters which strongly interest the passions, and engage universal attention. It is not difficult to obtain readers, when we discuss a question which every one is desirous to understand, which is debated in every assembly, and has divided the nation into parties; or when we display the faults or virtues of him whose public conduct has made almost every man his enemy or his friend."
Johnson: Rambler #106 (March 23, 1751)
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