James Boswell Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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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.”
-- James Boswell -
“I have discovered that we may be in some degree whatever character we choose. Besides, practice forms a man to anything....”
-- James Boswell -
“A page of my journal is like a cake of portable soup. A little may be diffused into a considerable portion.”
-- James Boswell -
“I, who have no sisters or brothers, look with some degree of innocent envy on those who may be said to be born to friends.”
-- James Boswell -
“It is not every man who can be exquisitely miserable, any more than exquisitely happy.”
-- James Boswell -
“But what can a man see of a library being one day in it?”
-- James Boswell -
“Writing a book I have found to be like building a house. A man forms a plan, and collects materials. He thinks he has enough to raise a large and stately edifice; but after he has arranged, compacted and polished, his work turns out to be a very small performance. The authour however like the builder, knows how much labour his work has cost him; and therefore estimates it at a higher rate than other people think it deserves”
-- James Boswell -
“I argued that the chastity of women was of much more consequence than that of men, as the property and rights of families depend upon it.”
-- James Boswell -
“After I went to bed I had a curious fancy as to dreams. In sleep the doors of the mind are shut, and thoughts come jumping in at the windows. They tumble headlong, and therefore are so disorderly and strange. Sometimes they are stout and light on their feet, and then they are rational dreams.”
-- James Boswell -
“If a man is prodigal, he cannot be truly generous.”
-- James Boswell -
“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?”
-- James Boswell -
“Those who would extirpate evil from the world know little of human nature. As well might punch be palatable without souring as existence agreeable without care.”
-- James Boswell -
“When we know exactly all a man's views and how he comes to speak and act so and so, we lose any respect for him, though we may love and admire him.”
-- James Boswell -
“Friendship, "the wine of life," should, like a well-stocked cellar, be continually renewed.”
-- James Boswell -
“But the question is, whether the animals who endure such sufferings of various kinds for the service and entertainment of man, would accept existence upon the terms on which they have it.”
-- James Boswell -
“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.”
-- James Boswell -
“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.”
-- James Boswell -
“Why should not the knowledge, the skill, the expertness, the assiduity, and the spirited hazards of trade and commerce, when crowned with success, be entitled to give those flattering distinctions by which mankind are so universally captivated? Such are the specious, but false arguments for a proposition which always will find numerous advocates, in a nation where men are every day starting up from obscurity to wealth. To refute them is needless. The general sense of mankind cries out, with irresistible force, "Un gentilhomme est toujours gentilhomme.”
-- James Boswell -
“I am sensible that my keenness of temper, and a vanity to be distinguished for the day, make me too often splash in life.... I amresolved to restrain myself and attend more to decorum.”
-- James Boswell -
“I have seen many a bear led by a man: but I never before saw a man led by a bear.”
-- James Boswell -
“Addison writes with the ease of a gentleman. His readers fancy that a wise and accomplished companion is talking to them; so thathe insinuates his sentiments and taste into their minds by an imperceptible influence. Johnson writes like a teacher. He dictates to his readers as if from an academical chair. They attend with awe and admiration; and his precepts are impressed upon them by his commanding eloquence. Addison's style, like a light wine, pleases everybody from the first. Johnson's, like a liquor of more body, seems too strong at first, but, by degrees, is highly relished.”
-- James Boswell -
“My wife, who does not like journalizing, said it was leaving myself embowelled to posterity--a good strong figure. But I think itis rather leaving myself embalmed. It is certainly preserving myself.”
-- James Boswell -
“[A]s a lady adjusts her dress before a mirror, a man adjusts his character by looking at his journal.”
-- James Boswell -
“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.”
-- James Boswell -
“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.”
-- James Boswell -
“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.”
-- James Boswell -
“In comparing these two writers, he [Samuel Johnson] used this expression: "that there was as great a difference between them as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate." This was a short and a figurative statement of his distinction between drawing characters of nature and characters only of manners, but I cannot help being of opinion, that the neat watches of Fielding are as well constructed as the large clocks of Richardson, and that his dial plates are brighter.”
-- James Boswell -
“We had some port, and drank damnation to the play and eternal remorse to the author.”
-- James Boswell -
“In an orchard there should be enough to eat, enough to lay up, enough to be stolen, and enough to rot on the ground.”
-- James Boswell -
“He had no settled plan of life, nor looked forward at all, but merely lived from day to day. Yet he read a great deal in a desultory manner, without any scheme of study, as chance threw books in his way, and inclination directed him through them.”
-- James Boswell
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