"Dr. Johnson" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the morning I once spent picking up details, traditions, and remains of Dr. Johnson in various parts of the West Central district, and privately sympathised with this view, though I felt compelled to look severe. Momma, who was now lying down, dissented. What, then, she demanded, had we ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... us. To the general public it was necessary to explain what the Civil Service was, how it was recruited, what the abuses were, and how and why they were to be remedied. Old professional politicians, who look upon reform as Dr. Johnson defined patriotism, as the last refuge of a scoundrel, either laughed at what they called the politics of idiocy and the moon, or sneered bitterly that reformers were cheap hypocrites who wanted other people's places ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... forfeited that superiority which belongs to the children of nature. He has a finer taste in fruit than could be distilled from many successive committees of the Horticultural Society, and he eats with a relishing gulp not inferior to Dr. Johnson's. He feels and freely exercises his right of eminent domain. His is the earliest mess of green peas; his all the mulberries I had fancied mine. But if he get also the lion's share of the raspberries, he is a great planter, and sows those wild ones in the woods that ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... he observed towards animals. He was for the most part extravagantly fond of them; but, when he was displeased, and this frequently happened, and for very trivial reasons, his anger was alarming. Mary was what Dr. Johnson would have called, "a very good hater." In some instance of passion exercised by her father to one of his dogs, she was accustomed to speak of her emotions of abhorrence, as having risen to agony. In a word, her conduct during her girlish years, was such, as to extort some portion of affection ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... makes a common ordered life possible, and both must be true to the facts as they see them. When such conflict arises, as it has arisen lately, if the only answer we can give at present is the old answer given by Dr. Johnson, 'The state had a right to martyr the Early Christians, and they had a right to be martyred,' yet at least we are farther on if each side honestly recognizes the importance of the work that the other has ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... printing-house was removed from Blackfriars to New Street, near Gough Square, Fleet Street. William Strahan was intimately associated with the best literature of his time, among those for whom he published being Dr. Johnson, Hume, Adam Smith, Robertson, and many other eminent writers. In 1774 he was Master of the Stationers' Company, Member of Parliament for Malmesbury, and sat for Wootton Bassett in the next Parliament. Among his greatest friends was Benjamin Franklin, who kept up a correspondence ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... were engraved and sold in great numbers; her life written, books of letters and verses to her published, and pamphlets made even of her sayings and jests. Furthermore, it drove out of England, for that season, the Italian Opera, which had carried all before it for ten years." Dr. Johnson, in his Life of the Author, says, that Herring, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, censured the opera, as giving encouragement, not only to vice, but to crimes, by making the highwayman the hero, and dismissing him at last unpunished; ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... [3] Dr. Johnson, it is well known, was a firm believer in ghosts, as the following extract will show:—"That the dead are seen no more," said Imlac, "I will undertake to maintain, against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages, and of all nations. * * * This opinion which, perhaps, prevails ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... the face of day by positions on conciliation boards, Justiceships of the Peace, Cabinet positions" [this is a hit at Mr. John Burns], "and well-paid jobs in the Labour Department of the Board of Trade. Are Shackleton, Bell, and Barnes honester men than Gompers, Mitchell, and Tobin? As Dr. Johnson very coarsely expressed it: 'It is difficult to settle the question of precedence between ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... his characteristics may seem ordinary enough—his fears, his greeds, his vices, his utilitarian repentances. They were compounded in him, however, in such proportion as to produce an entirely new mixture—a character hardly less original than Dr. Johnson or Charles Lamb. He had not any great originality of virtue, as these others had, but he was immensely original in his responsiveness—his capacity for being interested, tempted and pleased. The voluptuous nature ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... its life.... Some of these worthies masquerade as reformers. Their vocation and ministry is to lament the sins of other people. Their stock in trade is rancid, canting self-righteousness. They are wolves in sheep's clothing. Their real object is office and plunder. When Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel, he was unconscious of the then undeveloped capabilities and uses of the word reform.... Some of these new-found party overseers who are at this moment laying down new and strange tenets for Republicans, have deemed it their ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Henslowe's Diary, under date of February, 1598: "Lent unto the company, to discharge Mr. Decker out of the counter in the powltry, the sum of 40 shillings." Oldys tells us that "he was in King's Bench Prison from 1613 to 1616"; and the antiquary adds ominously, "how much longer I know not." Indeed, Dr. Johnson's celebrated condensation of the scholar's life would stand for a biography ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... merchant, the mechanic, or the farmer, to prosecute his business unmolested; shielded by the same laws which protect them from the attacks of malicious libellers out of the theatre, and the insults of capricious Ignorance or stupid Malevolence within. "Reproof," says Dr. Johnson, "should not exhaust its power upon petty failings;" and "the care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature. On this principle the editors ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... of some preachers of socialism the answer lies on the surface. Socialism is of all creeds that which it is easiest to present to the ignorant; and in these days, like "patriotism" in the days of Dr. Johnson, it is often "the last refuge of a scoundrel," or of a desperate and ambitious fool. But I here put such cases altogether aside. What I here have in view are men who are morally and intellectually honest, and many of whom, ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... left their 'bus in Fleet Street, and dived down a narrow lane to a low doorway with the sign of the Cheshire Cheese—the old inn with sanded floor and bare oak benches and tables, where Dr. Johnson and his followers used to meet, to dine and afterwards to smoke long churchwarden pipes and talk, as Wally said, "such amazing fine language that it made you feel a little light-headed." It is to be feared that the Australians had not any great enthusiasm for Dr. Johnson. ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... singled out by a tyrannous administration." Knowing that "their merits, not their crimes, make them the objects of Ministerial vengeance," they refused to pay a penny tax with the religious fervor of men doing battle for the welfare of the human race. Consider the dry common sense with which Dr. Johnson disposed of the alleged Tyranny of Great Britain: "But I say, if the rascals are so prosperous, oppression has agreed with them, or there has been no oppression"; and contrast it with the reverent spirit which pervades the writings of John Dickinson or the formal protests of ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... of the British Museum, compiled by Thomas Oliphant, Esq., it is stated that the words to Acis and Galatea "are said to be written, but apparently partly compiled, by John Gay." This serenata is included among Gay's Poems in Dr. Johnson's edition of the English Poets, 1790, as well as in Chalmers's edition of 1810, and in the complete edition of British ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... willing, his appointment not being till early next morning, and the three went off to the "Cheshire Cheese," where Killigrew drew portraits of Dr. Johnson on the tablecloth and placated the head-waiter by telling him how famous he, Killigrew, was going to be and how valuable the tablecloth would consequently be in fifty years' time. Ishmael enjoyed that dinner. He was unused to ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... one more pause. This chapter's theme is, as was betimes premised, not the strength of theism, but the weakness of atheism. I have in it attempted to execute a design which, according to Boswell, was conceived by Lord Hailes, and approved by Dr. Johnson, that of writing an essay, Sur la credulite des incredules, and I think I have succeeded so far as to show that, if any one who can swallow atheism affects to strain at theism, it cannot, at any rate, be for want of a ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... writing-folk to-day Like those whose names, in days gone by, Upon the scroll of fame stood high. And when I think of Smollett's tales, Of waspish Pope's ill-natured rails, Of Fielding dull, of Sterne too free, Of Swift's uncurbed indecency, Of Dr. Johnson's bludgeon-wit, I must confess ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... "Dr. Johnson was several times at Lichfield on visits to Mrs. Lucy Porter, his daughter-in-law, while Dr. Darwin was one of the inhabitants. They had one or two interviews, but never afterwards sought each other. Mutual and strong dislike subsisted between ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... also with what Dr. Johnson has called 'metaphysical distresses.' It is striking enough to observe how differently the quiet monasteries of the Carthusian and Trappist brotherhoods affected Matthew Arnold and Robert Louis Stevenson. In his well-known elegiac ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... as Dr. Johnson describes them, referring to the severity of the climate and the poverty of the soil, Prince Charles and his adherents were lodged in a small country house, with a hole in the roof for a chimney, and a fire in the middle ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... the life and fire of youth, and it was marvellous to see that the many afflictions she had suffered had not touched her wit and good nature, but at upwards of three-score she had both in their full perfection." Upon this appointment Dr. Johnson commented: "By quitting a shop for such service Gay might gain leisure, but he certainly advanced little on the boast of independence." As has been seen, however, there was an interval of several years between Gay's apprenticeship and his taking up this position as the Duchess's ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... cries Sylvia, clapping her hands. "And Westminster Abbey, and the Tower, and St. James's Palace, and Hyde Park, and Fleet-street! 'Sir,' said Dr. Johnson, 'let us take a walk down Fleet-street.' Do you remember, in Mr. Croker's book, Maurice? No, you don't I know, because you only looked at the pictures, and then read Pierce Egan's account of the Topping Fight between Bob Gaynor and Ned Neal, or ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... Dr. Johnson has remarked that the French are fond of Young's Night Thoughts, a fact which is hard to be accounted for, that a nation so celebrated for their gaiety should have a regard for an author treating on such ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... Dr. Johnson's sturdy self-respect led him to invent the Bookseller as a substitute for the Patron. My relations with you have enabled me to discover how pleasantly the Friend may replace the Bookseller. Let me record my sense of many thoughtful services by associating ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... were one's fortune to be sent to prison,—and the access to such retirement is growing more and more facile in many regions of our common country,—one would certainly wish to carry a dumb-bell with him, precisely as Dr. Johnson carried an arithmetic in his pocket on his tour to the Hebrides, as containing the greatest amount of nutriment in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... bridge is prolific of metaphor, whereof an amusing instance is Boswell's comparison of himself, when translating Paoli's talk to Dr. Johnson, to a "narrow isthmus connecting two continents." It has been aptly said of Dante's great poem, that, in the world of letters, it is a mediaeval bridge over that vast chasm which divides classical from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... Isocrates; such were some of the sophists; they were set on words, to the neglect of thoughts or things; I cannot defend them. If I must give an English instance of this fault, much as I love and revere the personal character and intellectual vigour of Dr. Johnson, I cannot deny that his style often outruns the sense and the occasion, and is wanting in that simplicity which is the attribute of genius. Still, granting all this, I cannot grant, notwithstanding, that genius never need take pains,—that genius ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... disgraceful, involved sometimes bitter mortifications, and seems to us inconsistent with self-respect. We remember how it was resented in modern times, though in a much milder form, by Edmund Spenser, Dr. Johnson, and the poet Crabbe. Even between a Horace and a Maecenas it must have caused occasional embarrassment: we find the former, for instance, dedicating poems to men whose character he could not respect, but to whom, as his patron's associates, he was bound ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... Dr. Johnson has said,—"There are a thousand familiar disputes which reason never can decide; questions that elude investigation, and make logic ridiculous; cases where something must be done, and where little ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... and returned to the farm, cursing all unimaginative pedants who cannot conceive that there may be things in creation which have never yet chanced to come across their mole's vision. After all, now that I am cooler, I can afford to admit that I have been no more sympathetic to Armitage than Dr. Johnson ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... then it is because I am suited to it. I couldn't write four lines in verse, no, not to save me from being shot. A man cannot have all the advantages of life. Who would not be poor if he could be sure of possessing genius, and winning fame and immortality, sir? Think of Dr. Johnson, what a genius he had, and where did he live? In apartments that, I daresay, were no better than these, which, I am sure, gentlemen, are most cheerful and pleasant," says the Colonel, thinking he had offended us. "One of the great pleasures and delights which I had proposed to myself ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... exactly the same to his superiors, his equals, and his inferiors; and therefore, by a necessary consequence, absurd to two of the three. Is it possible to love such a man? No. The utmost I can do for him, is to consider him as a respectable Hottentot.—[This 'mot' was aimed at Dr. Johnson in retaliation for his ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... "Poor Dr. Johnson's remains passed my door for interment this afternoon. They were accompanied by thirteen mourning coaches with four horses each; and after these a cavalcade of the carriages of his friends. He was about to ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... literary men. Dr. Johnson had just completed his famous dictionary, and was the centre of a group of writers who accepted him at his own valuation. Burke did not want for company, and wrote copiously.[Footnote: Hints for an Essay ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... that "all men are created equal," and the Tory Dr. Johnson, when he spoke of "the natural equality of man," used a curious eighteenth century phrase, of which a Greek scholar can see the origin; but it did not mean anything absurd, nor, on the other hand, did ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... I remember hearing a stupid old lady say, as though her opinion were quite decisive of the question, that no clergyman ought to have so much as a thousand a year; for, if he had, he would be sure to neglect his duty. You remember what Dr. Johnson said to a woman who expressed some opinion or other upon a matter she did not understand. "Madam," said the moralist, "before expressing your opinion, you should consider what your opinion is worth." But this shaft would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... [Dr. Johnson, when introduced to a stranger repeated his name several times aloud and sometimes spelled it. This produced a vivid first impression of the man's name; but it did not connect the name to the man who bore it. People who have adopted the Johnsonian ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... of course; but just here lies the power of his special genius. He never attempted to express what he did not fully comprehend. If he saw things narrowly, he saw them definitely, and there was no mistaking the ideas he wished to convey. "He understands himself," said Dr. Johnson, "and his reader always understands him." Within his limitations Swift swayed a sovereign power. His narrowness of vision, however, did never blind him to the relations that exist between fact and fact, between object and subject, between the actual and the possible. At the same ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... very sheen of moonlight upon it, and certainly is to be preferred to Dr. Johnson's ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... he called him a clubbable man, and so he had for those days which dreamed not of vast caravanserai calling themselves clubs and having thousands of members on their roll, the majority of whom do not know more than perhaps ten of their fellow members from Adam. In the sense that Dr. Johnson meant, all these wits and beaux whom our Whartons have gathered together were eminently clubbable. If some such necromancer could come to us as he who in Tourguenieff's story conjures up the shade of Julius Caesar; and if in an obliging way he could make these wits and beaux ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... approach to intimacy those whom he found to be untruthful or not straightforward. Naturally he did not offer any unnecessary encouragement to bores and dullards, but in his intercourse with these undesirables and wasters of his time he adopted none of the "offensive-defensive" methods of, say, Dr. Johnson or Lord Westbury. He armed himself with a cold correctitude of politeness, and lowered the social temperature instead ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... piece of work to commence. The two lasted her till the spring, when, though she continued to work, she left off reading. Her favourite study was history, which she read through the medium of Dr. Goldsmith. Her favourite author in the belles lettres was, of course, Dr. Johnson. A worthier woman, or one more respected, was not to be found, except ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... at Court at an exceptionally early age, and became a great favourite of the Queen of Holland. Fate, indeed, seemed to have placed at her disposal everything which society most values, and to have enabled her to realize in an unusual degree what Dr. Johnson so happily described as "the potentialities of wealth." All the enjoyments of literary and artistic culture, all the pleasures of a refined and favoured life, all the influence for good or evil that accrues to a leader ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... Lee," and "Ulalume," saying that the last stanza of "Ulalume" might not be intelligible to them, as it was not to him and for that reason had not been published. Even if he had known what it meant, he objected to furnishing it with a note of explanation, quoting Dr. Johnson's remark about a book, that it was "as obscure as an ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... moisture being caused by a waxing moon, it was necessary to avoid cutting such things as would spoil by moisture at that time. Similar beliefs are found among the Celts. Mistletoe and other magical plants were culled with a waxing moon, probably because their power would thus be greater. Dr. Johnson noted the fact that the Highlanders sowed their seed with a waxing moon, in the expectation of a better harvest. For similar occult reasons, it is thought in Brittany that conception during a waxing moon produces a male child, during a waning moon a female, while accouchements ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... I have an even stronger line of argument if I choose to take it. I can put in a counter-claim. One of the principal attractions of old furniture, after all, is historic association. There is the armchair, you know, that Dr. JOHNSON sat in, and the inkpot, or whatever it was, that MARY, Queen of Scots, threw at JOHN BUNYAN or somebody, and I have also seen garden-seats carved out of famous battleships. And then again, if you go to Euston, or it may be Darlington, you will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... parole femmine,—deeds are masculine, words feminine,—says the Italian proverb. The same thought is found in several of our own writers. George Herbert said bluntly: "Words are women, deeds are men"; Dr. Madden: "Words are men's daughters, but God's sons are things"; Dr. Johnson, in the preface to his great dictionary, embodies the saying of the Hindus: "Words are the daughters of earth, things are the sons ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... truth of this line of Dr. Johnson's, although I was then ignorant of it. I met his nephew on the landing, but my fears had vanished. We talked, however, of the departed bird, and he wished me, in the event of discovery, to declare that ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... started out to learn Dr. Johnson's Dictionary by heart," he observed. "Now by a fair calculation how long do you suppose it will ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... straight, what have we uttered but a truism? Training for life teaches living; but what training for the profitable living together of black men and white? Two hundred years ago our task would have seemed easier. Then Dr. Johnson blandly assured us that education was needed solely for the embellishments of life, and was useless for ordinary vermin. To-day we have climbed to heights where we would open at least the outer courts of knowledge to all, display its treasures to many, and select the few to whom ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... Nights are amongst the few books where children and men find themselves meeting and jostling each other. This was the case from its first publication, just one hundred and twenty years since. 'It was received,' says Dr. Johnson, 'with such avidity, that the price of the first edition was raised before the second could be made—it was read by the high and the low, the learned and the illiterate. Criticism was lost in wonder. Now, on the contrary, Schlosser wonders not at all, but simply criticises; ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... frank and gay like a nice boy's. She neither falls into the Scylla of affectation nor the Charybdis of off-handness. She has been nowhere and seen very little; books are her world, and she talks of book-people as if they were everyday acquaintances. She adores Dr. Johnson and ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... terrier had its early home in the misty island of Skye; which is not to say that it was not also to be found in Lewis, Oronsay, Colonsay and others of the Hebrides, as well as on the mainland of Scotland. Dr. Johnson, who visited these islands with Boswell in 1773, noticed these terriers and observed that otters and weasels were plentiful in Skye, that the foxes were numerous, and that they were hunted by small dogs. He was so accurate an observer that one regrets he did not describe ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... published with the translation, shows that the public which Bourrit addrest included Edmund Burke, Sir Joseph Banks, Bartolozzi, Fanny Burney, Angelica Kauffman, David Garrick, Sir Joshua Reynolds, George Augustus Selwyn, Jonas Hanway and Dr. Johnson. His writings earned him the honorable title of Historian (or Historiographer) of the Alps. Men of science wrote him letters; princes engaged upon the grand tour called to see him; princesses sent him presents as tokens of their admiration and regard ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... whimsical triumph which he once enjoyed over the celebrated Dr. Johnson. O'Leary was very anxious to be introduced to that learned man, and Mr. Arthur Murphy took him one morning to the doctor's lodgings. On his entering the room, the doctor viewed him from top to toe, without taking any notice of him; and, at length, darting one of his sourest looks at ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... take Shakspeare for a type of the drama, what, we ask, is the distinguishing merit of this great writer? It is his fidelity to Nature. Is not the Bible also equally true to Nature? "It is the praise of Shakspeare," says Dr. Johnson, "that his plays are the mirror of life." Was there ever a more consummate mirror of life than the Bible affords? "Shakspeare copied the manners of the world then passing before him, and has more allusions than other poets to the traditions and superstitions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... certain consequences which follow the perpetration of crime, I send this volume forth, in the fervent hope that those who may read its pages, will glean from this history the lessons of virtue, of honor, and of the strictest integrity. If in the punishment of Eugene Pearson, Dr. Johnson, Newton Edwards and Thomas Duncan, the young men of to-day, tempted by folly or extravagance, will learn that their condemnation was but the natural and inevitable result of thoughtless crime, and if their experience shall ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... Dr. Johnson calls portrait painting "that art which is employed in diffusing friendship, in reviving tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... either require or supply culture. A mastery of the "Summa" will not prevent you from doing an awkward action. Dr. Johnson's learning was the marvel of his age, but his manners were a by-word. So, if your only destiny was to be a scholar or a hermit, manners need ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... my enthusiasm. I spoke patronizingly to the young gentleman. Dr. Johnson, at the brewer's vendue, could not have been ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... comparing their own penury with the opulence of others. A wise nature will take an opposite course and will cultivate the habit of looking rather at the round of the ladder of fortune which is below our own and realising the countless points in which our lot is better than that of others. As Dr. Johnson says, 'Few are placed in a situation so gloomy and distressful as not to see every day beings yet more forlorn and miserable from whom they may learn to rejoice in their ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Christian charity feels constrained to unmask a demon from the depths of the pit. The plain men of the earth, who are apt to measure the merits of a philosopher by the strength of his sympathy with existing sources of comfort, would generally approve the saying of Dr. Johnson, that he would sooner sign a sentence for Rousseau's transportation than that of any felon who had gone from the Old Bailey these many years, and that the difference between him and Voltaire was so slight that "it would be difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... fancied ourselves the most learned philos in existence. Every one had a great character assigned him, suggested by some casual habit or affectation. One heavy fellow drank an enormous quantity of tea; rolled in his armchair, talked sententiously, pronounced dogmatically, and was considered a second Dr. Johnson; another, who happened to be a curate, uttered coarse jokes, wrote doggerel rhymes, and was the Swift of our association. Thus we had also our Popes and Goldsmiths and Addisons, and a blue-stocking lady, whose drawing-room ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... it as 'the worship of the unknown, piety, godliness, humility, before the unknown.' Lavater as 'Faith in the supernatural, invisible, unknown.' Vauvenargus as 'the duties of men towards the unknown.' Dr. Johnson as 'Virtue founded upon reverence of the unknown, and expectation of future rewards and punishments.' Rivarol as 'the science of serving the unknown.' La Bruyere as 'the respectful fear of the unknown.' ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... writers treat the matter lightly, seeing in it rather a huge joke on the "miserable Indians," and give the friars great credit for "patriotism," a term which in this connection they dragged from depth to depth until it quite aptly fitted Dr. Johnson's famous definition, "the ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... books of Scott's and Johnson's, there is a copious Life by Thomas Sheridan (Dr. Johnson's "Sherry"), father of Richard Brinsley, and son of that good-natured, clever, Irish Doctor, Thomas Sheridan, Swift's intimate, who lost his chaplaincy by so unluckily choosing for a text on the king's birthday, "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof!" Not to mention less important works, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a sub-species of "sons"—Ben Jonson, Dr. Johnson, William Watson, John Davidson, Austin Dobson. Nevertheless there is an overwhelming preponderance of "r" sounds in the names of the world's authors. What is the underlying reason? Is there a certain rugged virility in the letter, which made it somehow expressive of the nature ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... essay on Madame D’Arblay, that Lady Miller kept a vase “wherein fools were wont to put bad verses.” Dr. Johnson also said, when Boswell named a gentleman of his acquaintance who wrote for the vase, “He was a blockhead for his pains”; on the other hand, when told that the Duchess of Northumberland wrote, Johnson said, “Sir, the Duchess of Northumberland may do ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... up the different treatments of pneumonia that have been in fashion in our day; there must be seven or eight, and I am only afraid the next thing will be a sort of skepticism and contempt of remedies. Dr. Johnson said long ago that physicians were a class of men who put bodies of which they knew little into bodies of which they knew less, but certainly this isn't the fault of the medicines altogether; you and I know well enough they are often ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... depraved morality. His sixteen satires exhibit an enlightened, truthful, and comprehensive view of Roman manners, and of the inevitable result of such depravity. The two finest of them are those which Dr. Johnson has thought ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... it deserves. It is a well-worn, well-read volume, of no value whatever as an edition,—but it belonged to Abraham Lincoln. It is his copy of "The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., to which is prefixed the life of the author by Dr. Johnson." It bears the imprint on the title-page of J.J. Woodward, Philadelphia, and was published in 1839. Our President wrote his own name in it, and chronicles the fact that it was presented to him "by his friend N.W. Edwards." ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... beginnings of his taste for literature, the essay was his favorite form. Dr. Johnson was the prophet of his youth, but he soon transferred his allegiance to Emerson, who for many years remained his "master enchanter." To cure himself of too close an imitation of the Concord seer, which ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... seventy years old, a literary man, who for fifty years has been familiar with the best society in London, and knows everybody for whom one cares to ask. He is a perfect mine of rich memories. He pleased me mightily, and made me think of Dr. Johnson. Rose sat on his knee, and gazed with unwinking, earnest eyes into his face. He said he never saw anything like it except the gaze of Talleyrand (whom he knew very well). He said that Talleyrand undertook ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... the work to them. Well, as a matter of fact, they do leave a large part of it. If they did not they would have no excuse for having subordinates. The reward of good work is more work. This is less of a hardship than it sounds. Sir James Barrie once quoted Dr. Johnson's statement that doubtless the Lord could have made a better fruit than the strawberry, but that he doubtless never did, and added to it that He doubtless could have created something that was more fun than hard work, but that ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... of William Rufus,' can forget how often it has been the theatre of those mighty conflicts, in which, however slowly and reluctantly, error and prejudice have been compelled to relax their hold on the human mind? Dr. Johnson has spoken to us, in his usual stately phrase, of patriotism re-invigorated and of piety warmed amid the scenes of Marathon and Iona; but where is the Marathon which appeals to us so forcibly as the field consecrated by the blood of a Hamden or a Falkland? ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... foreigner: probably from pakepakeha, imaginary beings of evil influence, more commonly known as patupaiarehe, said to be like men with fair skins." Some express this idea by "fairy." Another explanation is that the word is a corruption of the coarse English word, said to have been described by Dr. Johnson (though not in his dictionary), as "a term of endearment amongst sailors." The first a in Pakeha had something of the u sound. The sailors' word would have been introduced to New Zealand by whalers in the early ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... magic and Mr. Widdicomb (of whom dark hints of identification with the wandering Jew have been dropped—who, we know, taught Prince George of Denmark horsemanship—who is mentioned by Addison in the "Spectator," by Dr. Johnson in the "Rambler," and helped to put out each of the three fires that have happened at Astley's during the last two centuries), brought by these considerations to a train of mind highly susceptible of supernatural agency, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... his recollections and glance at them under the right angle, and his life is full of pantomime transformation scenes." The chief characteristic of his wit was its unexpectedness; sometimes acrid, sometimes humorous, his sayings came forth, like Topham Beauclerk's in Dr. Johnson's day, like Talleyrand's in our own, poignant without effort. His calm, gentle voice, contrasted with his startling caustic utterance, reminded people of Prosper Merimee: terse epigram, felicitous apropos, whimsical presentment of the topic under discussion, emitted ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... a refined suspiciousness to which, when the plea of reform is urged, the claims of suffering humanity at once begin to hum. The very word reform irritates a peculiar kind of sensibility, as a red flag stirs the fury of a bull. A noted party leader said, with inexpressible scorn, 'When Dr. Johnson defined the word patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel, he had not learned the infinite possibilities ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... that this was not a "touch." He quoted Dr. Johnson's definition that teaching was the universal refuge of educated indigents. "I do not mean to remain an indigent all my life," he added, feeling that this was a touch on ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... that they may see the frightened poet drop from the window, half dead with alarm; old Foulis, the Glasgow printer, volunteers to send from his press such, a luxurious edition of Gray's poems as the London printers can not match; Dr. Johnson, holding the page to his eyes, growls over this stanza, and half-grudgingly praises that. I had spent perhaps the pleasantest day which the fates vouchsafed me during my sojourn in England; and here I was back again in Slough Station, ready to return ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... is a race of gentle folk Who dwell in Chiswick, well content In houses aged as the oak, But not unpleasing at the rent; They look across the sunny stream As Dr. JOHNSON used to look, And all their lives are one long dream, Though none of them has got a cook, And there are whispers in the camp, "It's jolly, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... which he usually carried 'to carve fruit and sweetmeats,' and killed his assailant. In that age, when our law courts were a veritable shambles, how cheerful it is to find that the jury returned a verdict of 'self-defence.' But then Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Dr. Johnson, and David Garrick gave evidence to character, representing Baretti as 'a man of benevolence, sobriety, modesty, and learning.' This trial is an oasis of mercy in a desert of drastic punishment. Borrow carries on ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... poems of that fatal cut-and-dried appearance, that vain repetition of certain phrases and thoughts, which mars the work of sacred poets generally, and which has led to an unjustly strong censure being laid on them by critics, so different from each other as Dr. Johnson and Mr. Matthew Arnold. As the alleged Paganism of some of Herrick's sacred poems exists only in the imagination of readers, so the alleged insincerity is equally hypothetical, and can only be supported by the argument (notoriously false to history and ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... sale of a few trinkets, which I had fortunately secreted on my first arrest. How are we to exist, and what an existence to be solicitous about! In gayer moments, and, perhaps, a little tinctured by romantic refinement, I have thought Dr. Johnson made poverty too exclusively the subject of compassion: indeed I believe he used to say, it was the only evil he really felt for. This, to one who has known only mental suffering, appears the notion of a coarse mind; but I doubt whether, the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... with the fine arts; and though such opinions are of necessity commonly crude, and sometimes absurd, they, on the other hand, frequently display a degree of feeling, and occasionally of knowledge, that surprises you. It may be true indeed, as Dr. Johnson said, with some illiberality, of our brethren across the Tweed, that though "every man may have a mouthful, no one has a belly full;" but it still marks a degree of national refinement, that any attention whatever is bestowed upon such subjects. This smattering of knowledge, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... like detonations in a gale. Yet quite often such words, when they are verbs, were once of the common stock of the language, as in the case of "belay," and it has happened that the sailor alone has been left to keep them alive. Dr. Johnson seems not to have known the meaning of the verb "to belay" among the other things he did not know but was very violent about. He thought it was a sea-phrase for splicing a rope, just as he supposed "main-sheet" was the largest sail of ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... know what Dr. Johnson says: 'That a sick man is a scoundrel.' There is a basis of truth in that apparent cruelty. It is true that 'scoundrel' is rather a harsh term to apply to a man whose moral obliquities have not received the official stamp in open court by a jury of his peers. The man whose imprudences and self-indulgences ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... scheme of social application which varies a good deal. For the moral basis, it is obvious that man's ethical responsibility varies with his knowledge of consequences. If I were in charge of a baby (like Dr. Johnson in that tower of vision), and if the baby was ill through having eaten the soap, I might possibly send for a doctor. I might be calling him away from much more serious cases, from the bedsides of babies whose diet had been far more deadly; but I should be justified. I could ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... lacking. "Tetty" it should not be, if for no other reason, for this—that the chance of writing "Tetty" as a title is a kind of facile literary opportunity; it shall be denied. The Essay owes thus much amends of deliberate care to Dr. Johnson's wife. But, indeed, the reason is graver. What wish would he have had but that the language in the making whereof he took no ignoble part should somewhere, at some time, treat his only friend with ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... manner of a racial dispossession, belongs to "The Lady of the Lake", not to sober history. All Scotland, indeed, has now, in one sense, been "rent by the Saxon" from the Celt. "Let no one doubt the civilization of these islands," wrote Dr. Johnson, in Skye, "for Portree possesses a jail." The Highlands and islands have been the last portions of Scotland to succumb to Anglo-Saxon influences; that the Lowlands formed an earlier victim does not prove that ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... title of Count, he acquired that of "Half-crown Bibb," by which appellation he was generally distinguished; and according to a rough, and, perhaps, fanciful estimate, he had borrowed at least 2,000l. in half-crowns. I remember to have met him on the day when the death of Dr. Johnson was announced in the newspapers, and, expressing my regret at the loss of so great a man, Bibb interrupted me, and spoke of him as a man of no genius, whose mind contained nothing but the lumber of learning. I was modestly beginning a panegyric upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... exact geographical knowledge as if he had been by Divine Providence ordained surveyor-general of the whole terrestrial globe and its products, minerals, plants, and animals." His memory is stated to have been inferior only to that of Seneca or Scaliger; and he was reputed master of seven languages. Dr. Johnson, who has written his biography, sums up his character in the following terms: "But it is not on the praises of others, but on his own writings, that he is to depend for the esteem of posterity, of which he will not easily be deprived, while learning shall ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Dr. Johnson once said that it is more from carelessness regarding the truth than from intentional lying that there is so much falsehood in ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... traits. But a very large nose at first rather lessened the pleasing effects of his other features, and a rather weather-beaten, corrugated face gave a preliminary suggestion of roughness. Yet Page had only to begin talking and the impression immediately changed. "He puts his mind to yours," Dr. Johnson said, describing the sympathetic qualities of a friend, and the same was true of Page. Half a dozen sentences, spoken in his quick, soft, and ingratiating accents, accompanied by the most genial smile, at once converted the listener into a friend. Few men have ever lived who more quickly responded ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... an excellent courtesy!] [—well kissed, and excellent courtesy;—] This I think should be printed, well kiss'd! an excellent courtesy! Spoken when Cassio kisses his hand, and Desdemona courtesies. [The old quarto confirms Dr. Johnson's emendation. STEEVENS.] ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... cherished of itself as a haunt of the Caesars, and was prepared to believe the waiters when they pointed out the mark of the Imperial head on the greasy walls, just as the waiters of the Cheshire Cheese in London point to the mark of Dr. Johnson's, while the flamboyancy of the cooking revealed to me the real reason of the decline and fall of Rome. I am afraid I should be telling the story of our own decline and fall had we sent off articles and received cheques every ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... to his victim. It was not published till 1751, when both Pope and Hervey were dead. In his later writings he made references to Sappho, which fixed the name upon her, and amongst other pleasant insinuations, speaks of a weakness which she shared with Dr. Johnson,—an inadequate appreciation of clean linen. More malignant accusations are implied both in his acknowledged and anonymous writings. The most ferocious of all his assaults, however, is the character of Sporus, that is Lord Hervey, in the epistle ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... I hope he will permit me to caution him against a mode of false criticism which has been applied to Poetry, in which the language closely resembles that of life and nature. Such verses have been triumphed over in parodies, of which Dr. Johnson's ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... which sacrifices the truth to nationality, speaks of our pretensions in these words: Les Anglois qui ont une litterature infiniment plus variee que la notre. This fact is a feature in our national pretensions that could ever have been regarded doubtfully merely through insufficient knowledge. Dr. Johnson, indeed, made it the distinguishing merit of the French, that they "have a book upon every subject." But Dr. Johnson was not only capricious as regards temper and variable humors, but as regards the inequality ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... language is not always sufficiently obscure, you know, to make that safe. And besides, as I so often say to Mr. Rabbet, it is sad to think of our greatest dramatist having been a drinking man. It quite depressed me all through the play to think of him hobnobbing with Dr. Johnson at the Tabard Inn, and making such irregular marriages, and stealing sheep—or was it ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... of the two houses, as they appeared to her before the end of a week, Fanny was tempted to apply to them Dr. Johnson's celebrated judgment as to matrimony and celibacy, and say, that though Mansfield Park might have some pains, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Julia sailed, Dr. Johnson paid his last call. He was not quite so bland as usual. All he wanted was the men's names to a paper, certifying to their having received from him sundry medicaments therein mentioned. This voucher, endorsed by Captain ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... lay and many a song Cheer'd the rough road, we wish'd the rough road long; The rough road then returning in a round, Mark'd their impatient steps, for all was fairy ground. DR. JOHNSON. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... at York, had taken up his quarters at a public house. The York inns of the period had an unenviable reputation, and were widely different from the Queen's and Rossin of the present day. Some of my readers will doubtless remember John Gait's savage fling at them several years later. To parody Dr. Johnson's characterization of the famous leg of mutton, they were ill-looking, ill-smelling, ill-provided and ill-kept. In a word, they were unendurable places of sojourn for a man of fastidious tastes and sensitive nerves. Perhaps the Captain's tastes ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... may amuse or instruct the world; and of this I am to judge by the letters which you have sent me. You admire fine writing; so do I. I class eloquence high amongst the fine arts. But by eloquence I mean something more than Dr. Johnson defines it to be, "the art of speaking with fluency and elegance." This is an art which is now possessed to a certain degree by every boarding-school miss. Every scribbling young lady can now string sentences ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... ever. His life henceforward was of the most strenuous. He had become a strong man—strong with that peculiar combination of mental and moral force which reveals itself in masculine common sense. His friends not unfrequently compared him to Dr. Johnson, and, much as the two men differed in some ways, there was a real ground for the comparison. Fitzjames might be called pre-eminently a 'moralist,' in the old-fashioned sense in which that term is applied to Johnson. He was profoundly interested, that ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Dr. Johnson's well-known characterization of the two reviews was quite just. On the occasion of his memorable interview (1767) with George III, Johnson gave the King information concerning the Journal des Savans and said of ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... II. professing to be his father's 'most humble and most obedient son and servant,' or to note how that very complete letter-writer, James Howell, claimed to be the Countess of Sunderland's 'most dutiful servant.' Dr. Johnson did well to announce himself haughtily as Chesterfield's 'most humble, most obedient servant;' while what could Sir Walter Scott be to his Duke of Buccleuch other than 'your Grace's truly obliged and grateful'? A similar sense of propriety induced Hood, ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams |
