James Boswell Quotes (23 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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The Life of Samuel Johnson

James Boswell

James Boswell: 23 quotes 0 likes

Famous James Boswell Quotes

“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 acts of kindness there is, at last, one which makes the heart run over.”

James Boswell book The Life of Samuel Johnson

(19 September 1777)
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791)
Variant: 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 kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.

“It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.”

James Boswell book The Life of Samuel Johnson

October 26, 1769, p. 174
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II
Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson

“Quoting: "Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.”

James Boswell

Source: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

“I jumped up on the benches, roared out, "Damn you, you rascals!", hissed and was in the greatest rage. […] I hated the English; I wished from my soul that the Union was broke and that we might give them another battle of Bannockburn.”

James Boswell

On an occasion of mocking a pair of Highland officers, circa 1672, as attributed by Ruaridh Nicoll, "As a Scot, I hate this idea of a neutered nation" http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/apr/22/scotland.devolution, The Observer, 22 April 2007

“[…] for the Doctor observed, that no man takes upon himself small blemishes without supposing that great abilities are attributed to him; and that, in short, this affectation of candour or modesty was but another kind of indirect self-praise, and had its foundation in vanity.”

James Boswell book The Life of Samuel Johnson

30 November 1784
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791)

“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.”

James Boswell

(31 August 1773
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1785)

James Boswell Quotes

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

James Boswell

Quoting John Wilmot, earl of Rochester's poem "To Lord Buckhurst", (18 August 1773)
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1785)

“My lord and Dr Johnson disputed a little, whether the savage or the London shopkeeper had the best existence; his lordship, as usual, preferring the savage.”

James Boswell

The lord was James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, (21 August 1773)
See similar debate in Angel.
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1785)