Samuel Johnson

[ On overindulgence in drink, to the extent of becoming a beast :] He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

[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.

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

[ 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.

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

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

Olivarii Goldsmith ,

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.

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

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.

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.

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

[ 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.

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

[ 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 .”

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.

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

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.

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

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

[ 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 .

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

[ 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?

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.

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

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 .