James Boswell - Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)

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He who has provoked the lash of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.

James Boswell
I shall always remember the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it — "I refute it thus."

James Boswell
When I called upon Dr. Johnson next morning, I found him highly satisfied with his colloquial prowess the preceding evening. "Well, (said he,) we had good talk." BOSWELL: "Yes, Sir, you tossed and gored several persons."

James Boswell
JOHNSON: "If I am well acquainted with a man, I can judge with great probability how he will act in any case, without his being restrained by my judging. God may have this probability increased to certainty."

James Boswell
Friendship, "the wine of life," should, like a well-stocked cellar, be continually renewed; and it is consolatory to think, that although we can seldom add what will equal the generous first growths of our youth, yet friendship becomes insensibly old in much less time than is commonly imagined, and not many years are required to make it mellow and pleasant.

James Boswell
My father had declared a predilection for heirs general, that is, males and females indiscriminately.... I, on the other hand, had a zealous partiality for heirs male, however remote.

James Boswell
No one science is so little connected with the rest, as not to afford many principles whose use may extend considerably beyond the science to which they primarily belong; and that no proposition is so purely theoretical as to be totally incapable of being applied to practical purposes.

James Boswell
Nay, Sir, it was not the WINE that made your head ache, but the SENSE that I put into it' 'What, Sir! will sense make the head ache?' 'Yes, Sir, (with a smile,) when it is not used to it.

James Boswell
Then, all censure of a man's self is oblique praise.

James Boswell
We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.

James Boswell
A man, indeed, is not genteel when he gets drunk; but most vices may be committed very genteelly: a man may debauch his friend's wife genteelly: he may cheat at cards genteelly.

James Boswell
Johnson is dead. Let us go to the next best — there is nobody; no man can be said to put you in mind of Johnson.

James Boswell
In every picture there should be shade as well as light.

James Boswell
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

James Boswell
His mind resembled the vast amphitheatre, the Coliseum at Rome. In the centre stood his judgment, which like a mighty gladiator, combated those apprehensions that, like the wild beasts of the arena, were all around in cells, ready to be let out upon him.

James Boswell
You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson. I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.

James Boswell
What can he mean by coming among us? He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dullness in others.

James Boswell
Friendship, the wine of life, should, like a well stocked cellar, be thus continually renewed.

James Boswell
We often observe in lawyers, who as Quicquid agunt homines is the matter of law suits, are sometimes obliged to pick up a temporary knowledge of an art or science, of which they understood nothing till their brief was delivered, and appear to be much masters of it.

James Boswell
[...] for the Doctor observed, that no man takes upon himself small blemishes without supposing that great abilities are attributed to him; and that, in short, this affectation of candour or modesty was but another kind of indirect self-praise, and had its foundation in vanity.

James Boswell