Quotes from James Boswell

The value of every story depends on its being true. A story is a picture either of an individual or of human nature in general: if it be false, it is a picture of nothing.

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen. It is assuming a superiority, and it is particularly wrong to question a man concerning himself. There may be parts of his former life he may not wish to be made known to other persons, or even brought to his own recollection.

But we find that war is followed by no general good whatever. The power, the glory, or the wealth of a very few may be enlarged. But the people in general, upon both sides, after all the sufferings are passed, pursue their ordinary occupations, with no difference from their former state. The evils therefore of war... are a mere loss without any advantage...

Yet he found an excuse for drunkenness which few men but he could have found. Stockdale (Memoirs, ii. 189) says that he heard Mrs. Williams 'wonder what pleasure men can take in making beasts of themselves. I wonder, Madam, replied Johnson, that you have not penetration enough to see the strong inducement to this excess; for he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.' [1278]

Burke is a great man by nature, and is expected soon to attain civil greatness. I am grown greater too, for I have maintained the newspapers these many weeks; and what is greater still, I have risen every morning since New-year's day, at about eight; when I was up, I have indeed done but little; yet it is no slight advancement to obtain for so many hours more, the consciousness of being.

The great business of his life (he said) was to escape from himself; this disposition he considered as the disease of his mind, which nothing cured but company.

I have found you an argument; I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

It is not every man who can be exquisitely miserable, any more than exquisitely happy.

I have seen many a bear led by a man: but I never before saw a man led by a bear.

If a man who is born to a fortune cannot make himself easier and freer than those who are not, he gains nothing.

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.

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.

If venereal delight and the power of propagating the species were permitted only to the virtuous, it would make the world very good.

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.

The Irish ignore anything they can't drink or punch.

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over. So in a series of kindness there is, at last, one which makes the heart run over.