Quotes to inspire and reflect

It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.

[Quotation] is a good thing; there is a community of mind in it. Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

[ When asked what he considered to be the real value of the Thrale Brewery, which, as executor, he was attempting to sell :] We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

[ To a follower of George Berkeley’s philosophy, which held that things exist only insofar as they are perceived by a mind :] Pray, Sir, don’t leave us; for we may perhaps forget to think of you, and then you will cease to exist.

I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning; for that is a sure good. I would let him at first read any English book which happens to engage his attention; because you have done a great deal when you have brought him to have entertainment from a book. He’ll get better books afterwards.

[ On the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland :] Worth seeing, yes; but not worth going to see.

All censure of a man’s self is oblique praise.

Olivarii Goldsmith ,

No, Sir; to act from pure benevolence is not possible for finite beings. Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive.

Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.

The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

A man should be careful never to tell tales of himself to his own disadvantage. People may be amused and laugh at the time, but they will be remembered, and brought out against him upon some subsequent occasion.

Why, sir, a man grows better humored as he grows older. He improves by experience. When young, he thinks himself of great consequence, and every thing of importance. As he advances in life, he learns to think himself of no consequence, and little things of little importance; and so he becomes more patient, and better pleased.

[ Of Lady Diana Beauclerk :] The woman’s a whore, and there’s an end on ’t.

[ Of Oliver Goldsmith’s apology in the London Chronicle for assaulting Thomas Evans :] He has, indeed, done it very well; but it is a foolish thing well done.

[ Replying to the question, “What, have you not read it through?” :] No, Sir, do you read books through?

[ Of Lord Mansfield, born in Scotland but educated in England :] Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

[ Of a man who remarried after the death of his first wife, with whom he had been unhappy :] The triumph of hope over experience.

Johnson observed, that “he did not care to speak ill of any man behind his back, but he believed the gentleman was an attorney .”

BOSEWELL: But is not the fear of death natural to man?

Being told she was remarkable for her humility and condescension to inferiors, he observed, that those were very laudable qualities, but it might not be so easy to discover who the lady’s inferiors were.

Sir, we know our will is free, and there’s an end on ’t.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

[ In response to Boswell’s observation that George Berkeley’s theory of the nonexistence of matter could not be refuted, Johnson kicked a large stone and said :] I refute it thus .

[ Of John Hawkins :] Sir John, Sir, is a very unclubable man.

Consider, Sir, how insignificant this will appear a twelvemonth hence.

This was a good dinner enough, to be sure; but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.

[ To a woman who asked him why he had defined pastern in his Dictionary of the English Language as a horse’s knee :] Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance.

[ After being absent from a tutorial at Oxford because he had been “sliding in Christ Church meadow” :] JOHNSON: I had no notion that I was wrong or irreverent to my tutor. BOSWELL: That, Sir, was great fortitude of mind. JOHNSON: No, Sir; stark insensibility.

[ Referring to his fits of melancholia :] The black dog I hope always to resist, and in time to drive. . . . When I rise my breakfast is solitary, the black dog waits to share it, from breakfast to dinner he continues barking. . . . Night comes at last, and some hours of restlessness and confusion bring me again to a day of solitude. What shall exclude the black dog from a habitation like this?

[ Of Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock:] New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.

The want of human interest is always felt. Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.

In the character of his [Thomas Gray’s] Elegy I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary prejudices . . . must be finally decided all claim to poetical honors.

Words being arbitrary must owe their power to association, and have the influence, and that only, which custom has given them. Language is the dress of thought.

About the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets .

Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life.

[ On a work by Congreve :] It is praised by the biographers. . . . I would rather praise it than read it.

While, an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead we rate them by his best.

[ Of Shakespeare :] He that tries to recommend him by select quotations, will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen.

No sooner are we supplied with every thing that nature can demand, than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites.

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

STAMMEL. . . . Of this word I know not the meaning.

No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.

GRUBSTREET. . . . Originally the name of a street in Moorfields in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems; whence any mean production is called grubstreet .

PENSION. . . . In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.

EXCISE. . . . A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.

FAVORITE. . . . One chosen as a companion by his superior; a mean wretch whose whole business is by any means to please.