Samuel JohnsonWhile an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead we rate them by his best.
About This Quote
An author is a person who writes a lot of words. A book is a collection of those words. When he is alive, it is very difficult to judge the powers of the author because he has not been able to show us his worst or his best writing. When he dies, it is easy to rate his powers because all that we have now are the words that he wrote.
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