"Johnsonian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... green. Three or four peasants, in festal attire, were strolling about. On a bench at the beginning of the avenue, sat a man with two women. As I advanced with my companions he rose, after a sudden stare, and approached me with a smile, in which (to be Johnsonian for a moment) certitude was mitigated by modesty and eagerness was embellished with respect. He came toward me with a salutation that I had seen before, and I am happy to say that after an instant I ceased to be guilty of the brutality ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... . . his voluminous figure, quite imposing when he stands up, though not so abundantly Johnsonian as his pictures lead one to expect. He has cascades of grey hair above a pinkly beaming face, a rather straggly blond mustache, and eyes that seem frequently to be taking up ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... possible upon the colored man, immediately after his emancipation, were very numerous and not unfrequently extremely subtle. The Black Codes, which were adopted by the legislatures first convened under what has gone into history as the "Johnsonian" plan of reconstruction, were models of ingenious subterfuge. Among those which survived this period was the absurd notion of a somewhat onerous poll-tax. That a man who had been deprived of every benefit ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... to illustrate the proposition, in one of which Johnson attacks Garrick in answer to Reynolds, and in the other defends him in answer to Gibbon. The dialogues seem to be very good reproductions of the Johnsonian manner, though perhaps the courteous Reynolds was a little too much impressed by its roughness; and they probably include many genuine remarks of Johnson's. It is remarkable that the praise is far more pointed and elaborate ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... writers of prose. But to dismiss Johnson's influence as something altogether deplorable, is surely to misunderstand the whole drift of the great revolution which he brought about in English letters. The characteristics of the pre-Johnsonian prose style—the style which Dryden first established and Swift brought to perfection—are obvious enough. Its advantages are those of clarity and force; but its faults, which, of course, are unimportant in the work of a great master, become ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... "Yes," he rejoined, complacently; "and I sent you to the War College." It was literally true, doubtless; his act, though not his selection; but in view of the cold comfort and the petard with which he there favored me, for Whitney to fancy himself a patron to me, except on a Johnsonian definition of the word,[16] was as humorous a performance as I ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... sixty acres of land, thus hiring all the convicts and paupers of Europe to come and settle in our Western States and Territories! Sir, but let your progressive, sublimated, double-distilled, converging-lines, Johnsonian Democracy bring into this Union one million of Spanish Papists—black, brown, sorrel, and tawny—under the guise of acquiring Cuba for the South: let them bring eight hundred thousand French and English Papists, under the name of acquiring Canada for the North: let them bring two millions of ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... is an oppugnancy of nature between the two things, and we may fairly suspect the former winnings of a man who has been once caught with loaded dice in his pocket. However firm may be Mr. Seward's faith in the new doctrine of Johnsonian infallibility, surely he need not have made himself a partner in its vulgarity. And yet he has attempted to vie with the Jack-pudding tricks of the unrivalled performer whose man-of-business he is, in attempting ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... pamphleteering. He was the first who wrote politics for the million. The learned political dissertations of Junius Brutus, Publius, or Philanglus were guarded in expression, semi-metaphysical in theory, and Johnsonian in style. They were relished by comparatively few readers; [1] but the shrewd illustrations of "Common Sense," the homely force of its statements, and its concise and muscular English stirred the mind of every class. Even Paine's coarse epithets, "Common Ruffian," "Royal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... 13. This Johnsonian definition may be objected to as merely accidental, and as inconsistent with the romantic character which the novel assumed in the hands of Sir Walter Scott. It expresses, however, adequately enough ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... St Mary's Loch, and in the Vale of Yarrow, to which the Shepherd's muse has imparted quite a classic interest. There was, however, a species of vulgarity about Hogg, which marred his otherwise estimable qualities, and his uncouth Johnsonian habits were probably the means of erecting a barrier between himself and more cultivated friends. Lockhart, in his life of Scott, speaks of Hogg as a "a true son of nature and genius," and this he undoubtedly was. One who had taught himself to write by copyright the letters of a printed book ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... quality of imagination is to ameliorate married life. But who in England or America (or elsewhere) thinks of it in that connection? The plain man considers that imagination is all very well for poets and novelists. Blockhead! Yes, despite my high esteem for him, I will apply to him the Johnsonian term of abuse. Blockhead! Imagination is super-eminently for himself, and was beyond doubt invented by Providence in order that the plain man might chiefly exercise it in the plain, drudging dailiness of married life. The day cometh, if tardily, ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... was it you or Mrs. Bryce who made that exceedingly clever speech! It was really worthy of Dr. Johnson; it only wanted a "Sir" to point the Doctor's style. "Sir, honest poverty is to be respected, but not when it is allied to pretension"—a good, thorough Johnsonian speech! And so the poor woman ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... his sober but excellently haberdashered surtout, was plainly a man of large frame, of a Sam Johnsonian mould, but, to the surprise of the calculating observer, it would be noted that his volume (or mass) was not what his bony structure implied. Spiritually, in deed, this interesting individual conveyed to the world a sensation of stoutness, of bulk and ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... No belles lettres of our immediate generation were found there; none of those authors most in request in circulating libraries and literary institutes. The shelves disclosed no poets, no essayists, no novelists, more recent than the Johnsonian age. Neither in the lawyer's library were to be found any law books; no, nor the pamphlets and parliamentary volumes that should have spoken of the once eager politician. But there were superb copies of the ancient classics. French and Italian authors were not wanting, nor such of ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... XXXVI of The Microcosm is a letter from Capel Lofft defending the "Middle Style" of Addison in contrast to the more modern Johnsonian eloquence. Robert Bell, The Life of the Rt. Hon. George Canning (London, 1846), pp. 48-54, in a helpful account of The Microcosm, stresses its general fidelity to ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... of his "Monthly Review," that the writer of a very elaborate article on the works of Dr. Parr, was no less a personage than the Doctor himself. His egotism was so declamatory, that it unnaturalized a great mind, by the distortions of Johnsonian mimicry; his fierceness, which was pushed on to brutality on the unresisting, retreated with a child's terrors when resisted; and the pomp of petty pride in table triumphs and evening circles, ill compensated for the lost century he ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... For with all his beauty, power, breeding, urbanity, and mirth, there was in those days something soulless in our friend. He would astonish us by sallies, witty, innocent, and inhumane; and by a misapplied Johnsonian pleasantry demolish honest sentiment. I can still see and hear him, as he went his way along the lamplit streets, "La ci darem la mano" on his lips, a noble figure of a youth, but following vanity and incredulous of good; and sure enough, somewhere on the high seas ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Burke, Robertson, the Wartons, Gray, Mason, Gibbon, Adam Smith, Beattie, Sir William Jones, Goldsmith, and Churchill, were the most distinguished writers of what may be called the second generation of the Johnsonian age. Of these men Churchill was the only one in whom we can trace the stronger lineaments of that character which, when Johnson first came up to London, was common among authors. Of the rest, scarcely ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Mervale, launching a premeditated sentence with more than Johnsonian dignity, "permit me to remind you that Mr. Mervale is now a married man, the destined father of a family, and the present master ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... literature, history, and philology will find the publications valuable. The Johnsonian News Letter has said of them: "Excellent facsimiles, and cheap in price, these represent the triumph of modern scientific reproduction. Be sure to become a subscriber; and take it upon yourself to see that your college library is on ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill |
