“A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.”

1755, p. 83
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

Variant: Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Source: Jingo

Source: Cold Days

B 12
Variant translation: Everyone has a moral backside, which he does not show except in case of need and which he covers as long as possible with the breeches of respectability.
As quoted in Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten [Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious] (1905) by Sigmund Freud, as translated by James Strachey (1960), p. 100
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook B (1768-1771)

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)

The Architecture of Theories (1891)
Context: Of the fifty or hundred systems of philosophy that have been advanced at different times of the world's history, perhaps the larger number have been, not so much results of historical evolution, as happy thoughts which have accidently occurred to their authors. An idea which has been found interesting and fruitful has been adopted, developed, and forced to yield explanations of all sorts of phenomena. … The remaining systems of philosophy have been of the nature of reforms, sometimes amounting to radical revolutions, suggested by certain difficulties which have been found to beset systems previouslv in vogue; and such ought certainly to be in large part the motive of any new theory. … When a man is about to build a house, what a power of thinking he has to do, before he can safely break ground! With what pains he has to excogitate the precise wants that are to be supplied. What a study to ascertain the most available and suitable materials, to determine the mode of construction to which those materials are best adapted, and to answer a hundred such questions! Now without riding the metaphor too far, I think we may safely say that the studies preliminary to the construction of a great theory should be at least as deliberate and thorough as those that are preliminary to the building of a dwelling-house.

Speech at St. Jame’s Hall, Picadilly, London, on 19th May 1870.

"The Individual and Political Life of Information Systems", in Heilprin, Markuson, and Goodman, ed., Proceedings of the Symposium on Education for Information Science, Warrenton, Virginia, September 7-10, 1965 (Washington, DC: Spartan Books, 1965)

Argument Against the Writs of Assistance (1761)