Quotes from James Boswell

For my own part I think no innocent species of wit or pleasantry should be suppressed: and that a good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation.

His mind resembled the vast ampitheatre, the Colisum at Rome. In the centre stood his judgement, 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. After a conflict, he drives them back into their dens; but not killing them, they were still assailing him.

I regretted I was not the head of a clan; however, though not possessed of such an hereditary advantage, I would always endeavour to make my tenants follow me.

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.

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

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

Such groundless fears will arise in the mind, before it has resumed its vigour after sleep!

As all who come into the country must obey the King, so all who come into an university must be of the Church.

In every place, where there is any thing worthy of observation, there should be a short printed directory for strangers.

Influence must ever be in proportion to property; and it is right it should.

The best good man, with the worst natur'd muse.

Boswell is pleasant and gay, For frolic by nature designed; He heedlessly rattles away When company is to his mind.

In the blithe days of honeymoon, With Kate's allurements smitten, I loved her late, I loved her soon, And call'd her dearest kitten. But now my kitten's grown a cat, And cross like other wives, O! by my soul, my honest Mat, I fear she has nine lives.

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.

That favorite subject, Myself.

My definition of man is "a cooking animal." The beasts have memory, judgment, and all the faculties and passions of our mind, in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook…. Man alone can dress a good dish; and every man whatever is more or less a cook, in seasoning what he himself eats.

I think no innocent species of wit or pleasantry should be suppressed; and that a good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation.

There is indeed a strange prejudice against Quotation.

I am now to offer some thoughts upon that sameness or familiarity which we frequently find between passages in different authors without quotation. This may be one of three things either what is called Plagiarism, or Imitation, or Coincidence.

I am, I flatter myself, completely a citizen of the world. In my travels through Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Corsica, France, I never felt myself from home.

Quotation is more universal and more ancient than one would perhaps believe.

The man who stops making new friends eventually will have none.

To act from pure benevolence is not possible for finite beings. Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive.

Once when somebody produced a newspaper in which there was a letter of stupid abuse of Sir Joshua Reynolds, of which Johnson himself came in for a share,––'Pray (said he), let us have it read aloud from beginning to end'; which being done, he with a ludicrous earnestness, and not directing his look to any particular person, called out, 'Are we alive after all this satire?