James Boswell Quotes
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Drinking is in reality an occupation which employs a considerable portion of the time of many people; and to conduct it in the most rational and agreeable manner is one of the great arts of living.
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If venereal delight and the power of propagating the species were permitted only to the virtuous, it would make the world very good.
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The connection between authors, printers, and booksellers must be kept up.
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Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.
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I think there is a blossom about me of something more distinguished than the generality of mankind.
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I am so fond of tea that I could write a whole dissertation on its virtues. It comforts and enlivens without the risks attendant on spirituous liquors. Gentle herb! Let the florid grape yield to thee. Thy soft influence is a more safe inspirer of social joy.
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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.
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There is indeed a strange prejudice against Quotation.
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My mind was, as it were, strongly impregnated with the Johnsonian ether.
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The man who stops making new friends eventually will have none.
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Many infidels have maintained that Ignorance is the mother of Devotion.
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A Sceptick therefore, who because he finds that Truths are not universally received, doubts of their existence, is just as foolish as a man who should try large shoes upon little feet, and little shoes upon large feet, and finding that they did not fit.
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[A]s a lady adjusts her dress before a mirror, a man adjusts his character by looking at his journal.
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What a curious creature is man; with what a variety of powers and faculties is he endued; yet how easily is he disturbed and put out of order.
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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.
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A page of my journal is like a cake of portable soup. A little may be diffused into a considerable portion.
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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.
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That favorite subject, Myself.
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As all who come into the country must obey the King, so all who come into an university must be of the Church.
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Influence must ever be in proportion to property; and it is right it should.
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O charitable philosopher, I beg you to help me. My mind is weak but my soul is strong. Kindle that soul, and the sacred fire shall never be extinguished.
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Dr. Johnson ... sometimes employed himself in chymistry, sometimes in watering and pruning a vine, and sometimes in small experiments, at which those who may smile, should recollect that there are moments which admit of being soothed only by trifles.
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I went to my father's at night. He spoke of poor John [Boswell's brother] with disgust. I was shocked and said, "He's your son, and God made him." He answered very harshly, "If my sons are idiots, can I help it?
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My curiosity to see the melancholy spectacle of the executions was so strong that I could not resist it, although I was sensible that I would suffer much from it.... I got upon a scaffold near the fatal tree so that I could clearly see all the dismal scene.... I was most terribly shocked, and thrown into a very deep melancholy.
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Buffon, who, with all his theoretical ingenuity and extraordinary eloquence, I suspect had little actual information in the science on which he wrote so admirably For instance, he tells us that the cow sheds her horns every two years; a most palpable error. ... It is wonderful that Buffon who lived so much in the country at his noble seat should have fallen into such a blunder I suppose he has confounded the cow with the deer.
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In an orchard there should be enough to eat, enough to lay up, enough to be stolen, and enough to rot on the ground.
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To abolish a status, which in all ages God has sanctioned, and man has continued, would not only be robbery to an innumerable class of our fellow-subjects; but it would be extreme cruelty to the African Savages, a portion of whom it saves from massacre, or intolerable bondage in their own country, and introduces into a much happier state of life; especially now when their passage to the West-Indies and their treatment there is humanely regulated.
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I make it a kind of pious rule to go to every funeral to which I am invited, both as I wish to pay a proper respect to the dead, unless their characters have been bad, and as I would wish to have the funeral of my own near relations or of myself well attended.
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But what can a man see of a library being one day in it?
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People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids? A man cannot know himself better than by attending to the feelings of his heart and to his external actions, from which he may with tolerable certainty judge "what manner of person he is." I have therefore determined to keep a daily journal.
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