1,148. Creativity
"In science, which, being fixed and limited, admits of no other
variety than such as arises from new methods of distribution,
or new arts of illustration, the necessity of following the
traces of our predecessors is indisputably evident; but there
appears no reason why imagination should be subject to the
same restraint."
Johnson: Rambler #121 (May 14, 1751)
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1,158. Creativity; Vision
"Imagination, a licentious and vagrant faculty, unsusceptible of
limitations and impatient of restraint, has always endeavoured to
baffle the logician, to perplex the confines of distinction, and
burst the enclosures of regularity."
Johnson: Rambler #125 (May 28, 1751)
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1,159. Creativity; Progress;
Writing
"There is ... scarcely any species of writing of which
we can tell what is its essence, and what are its constituents;
every new genius produces some innovation, which, when invented
and approved, subverts the rules which the practice of foregoing
authors had established."
Johnson: Rambler #125 (May 28, 1751)
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1,260. Creativity
"To the strongest and quickest mind it is far easier to learn
than to invent. The principles of arithmetic and
geometry may be comprehended by a close attention in a few
days; yet who can flatter himself that the study
of a long life would have enabled him to discover them, when
he sees them yet unknown to so many nations, whom he cannot
suppose less liberally endowed with natural reason, than the
Grecians or Egyptians?"
Johnson: Rambler #154 (September 7, 1751)
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1,275. Creativity; Tradition;
Writing
"It ought to be the first endeavour of a writer to distinguish
nature from custom; or that which is established because it is
right, from that which is right only because it is established;
that he may neither violate essential principles by a desire of
novelty, nor debar himself from the attainment of beauties
within his view, by a needless fear of breaking rules which
no literary dictator had authority to enact."
Johnson: Rambler #156 (September 14, 1751)
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1,278. Creativity; Criticism
"Criticism, though dignified from the earliest ages by the
labours of men eminent for knowledge and sagacity, and, since the
revival of polite literature, the favourite 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 adapted to the
natural and invariable constitution of things; but will be found
upon examination the arbitrary edicts of legislators, authorized
only by themselves, who, out of various means by which the same
end may be attained, selected such as happened to occur to their
own reflection, and then, by a law which idleness and timidity
were too willing to obey, prohibited new experiments of wit,
restrained fancy from the indulgence of her innate inclination to
hazard and adventure, and condemned all future flights of genius
to pursue the paths of the Mæonian eagle."
Johnson: Rambler #158 (September 21, 1751)
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