"Dr. Johnson" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... estimation in which Congreve was held than the fact that the English Iliad, a work which appeared with more splendid auspices than any other in our language, was dedicated to him. There was not a duke in the kingdom who would not have been proud of such a compliment. Dr. Johnson expresses great admiration for the independence of spirit which Pope showed on this occasion. "He passed over peers and statesmen to inscribe his Iliad to Congreve, with a magnanimity of which the praise ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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
... to be involved. Who is there, that, standing within 'the great hall 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 ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... scholarship 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
... Dr. Johnson thus sums up his notice of The Tempest. "Whatever might have been the intention of their author, these tales are made instrumental to the production of many characters, diversified with boundless invention, and preserved with profound ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... his best—his only pair? And what can be more ungenteel than poverty? Then again he had an uneasy trick of putting his hand up to his throat, as if he expected to find something the matter with it; and he had the awkward habit—which I do not think he could have copied from Dr. Johnson, because most probably he had never heard of him—of trying always to retrace his steps on the exact boards on which he had trodden to arrive at any particular part of the room. Besides, to settle the question, I once heard him addressed as Monsieur Poucet, without any aristocratic ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... i. 227), notes that the frolic prince, the "Adonis of fifty," who was in a good humour, and "had given to Princess Charlotte the centre sapphire of Charles's crown," acted "the manner of decapitation on my shoulders." He had "forgotten" Cromwell, who, as Lord Auchinleck reminded Dr. Johnson, had "gart kings ken that they had a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... second-hand bookstalls, and spent so much of my money for books that I had only enough left to carry me to Griffin's Corners, twelve miles from home. I bought Locke's "Essay on the Human Understanding," Dr. Johnson's works, Saint-Pierre's "Studies of Nature," and Dick's works and others. Dick was a Scottish philosopher whose two big fat volumes held something that caught my mind as I dipped into them. But I got little from him and soon laid him aside. On this and other trips to New York I was always drawn ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... take his part in the cry, instead of one mighty Tom of a fellow, like Dr. Johnson, silencing all besides by the tremendous depth of his diapason. On such occasions she afforded CHERE EXQUISE; and every now and then there was some dish of French, or even Scottish derivation, which, as well as the numerous assortment of VINS EXTRAORDINAIRES produced by Mr. Beauffet, gave a sort ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... were lost,—say, in England, all but Shakspeare, Milton, and Bacon, through the profounder study so drawn to those wonderful minds. With this pilot of his own genius, let the student read one, or let him read many, he will read advantageously. Dr. Johnson said, "Whilst you stand deliberating which book your son shall read first, another boy has read both: read anything five hours a day, and you will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... be repeated, is the exact and faithful representation of a man's spirit in poetry or prose. The precise value of that spirit does not matter for the moment. James Boswell, Dr. Johnson and Porteous, Bishop of Chester, investigated the matter with some acumen and some fruitfulness in one ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... of the World, laughing, "I shall have to nickname you Dr. Johnson Redivivus. I believe, were the subject under discussion, you would admire the coiffure of the Furies. It would occur to you that it ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... gushing and sentimental young bride any more. I am not sentimental, best-beloved! Do you believe that? The time we have had here together has been the best and sweetest time of my whole life, every minute worth all the years that went before. But you must write that down, as Dr. Johnson said, in the first page of your pocket-book, and never speak of it again. It's all too good and too sacred to talk about—almost to think about. And I don't believe in looking BACK, Howard—nor very much, I think, in looking forward. I know that I wasted ever so much time and energy as a ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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, but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... "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 them. It is curious that in ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... proper, went into "society." And what a society it was to enter! And what a man was Blake to enter it! The society of President Reynolds, and Mr. Mason the poet, and Mr. Sheridan the play-actor, and pompous Dr. Burney, and abstract Dr. Delap,—all honorable men; a society that was dictated to by Dr. Johnson, and delighted by Edmund Burke, and sneered at by Horace Walpole, its untiring devotee: a society presided over by Mrs. Montagu, whom Dr. Johnson dubbed Queen of the Blues; Mrs. Carter, borrowing, by right of years, her matron's plumes; Mrs. Chapone, sensible, ugly, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... Reaper spared him, and Sam came, and was introduced to the family, and ate. He put himself in a class with Dr. Johnson, and Ben Brust, and Gargantua, only that his table manners were better. He almost forgot to talk during the soup, and he came back three times for chicken, and by the time the strawberry shortcake was half consumed ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... of recent days has absurdly misrepresented Johnson as a smoker. The author of a book on tobacco published a few years ago wrote—"Dr. Johnson smoked like a furnace"—a grotesquely untrue statement—and "all his friends, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Garrick, were his companions in ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... number was published on the seventh of November, 1752. The quantity and price were the same as the Rambler, and also the days of its appearance. He was joined in his labours by Dr. Johnson in 1753, whose first paper is dated March 3, of that year; and after its publication Johnson applied to his friend, Dr. Joseph Warton, for his assistance, which was afforded: and the writers then were, besides the projector Dr. Hawkesworth, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... 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 ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... common colors on the palette with which I have been painting. I wish I had some brilliant dyes. I wish, with all my heart, I could take you back to that "Once upon a time" in which the souls of our grandmothers delighted,—the time which Dr. Johnson sat up all night to read about in "Evelina,"—the time when all the celestial virtues, all the earthly graces were revealed in a condensed state to man through the blue eyes and sumptuous linens of some Belinda Portman or Lord Mortimer. ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... note a certain peevish egotism of tone in the heroes of "Locksley Hall," of "Maud," of "Lady Clara Vere de Vere." "You can't think how poor a figure you make when you tell that story, sir," said Dr. Johnson to some unlucky gentleman whose "figure" must certainly have been more respectable than that which is cut by these whining and peevish lovers ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... or are become so from wine drinking, and are not susceptible of influence from so refined a stimulant, will always be the favorite beverage of the intellectual; and for my part, I would have joined Dr. Johnson in a bellum internecinum against Jonas Hanway, or any other impious person who should ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... Timothy Dwight of Yale College was able to assert, "Between the Bible and novels there is a gulf fixed which few novel-readers are willing to pass." Richardson was forced to defend himself, so was Sterne, so was Fielding, so was Goldsmith. Dr. Johnson was evidently making concessions when he advised romances as reading for youth. Jeffrey, the critic and tyrant of the next century, summed it all up when he wrote that novels are "generally regarded as among the lower productions of our literature." And this is the reputation ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... there are not more orchards attached to the gardens on the Cotswolds. The reader will doubtless remember Dr. Johnson's advice to his friends, always to have a good orchard attached to their houses. "For," said he, "I once knew a clergyman of small income who brought up a family very reputably, which he chiefly fed on ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... to Shakespeare is one of the most famous critical essays of the eighteenth century, and yet too many students have forgotten that it is, precisely, a preface to the plays of Shakespeare, edited by Dr. Johnson himself. That is to say, the edition itself has been obscured or overshadowed by its preface, and the sustained effort of that essay has virtually monopolized scholarly attention—much of which should be directed to the commentary. Johnson's love for Shakespeare's plays is well known; nowhere is ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... new series opens well with Mr. Leslie Stephen's sketch of Dr. Johnson. It could hardly have been done better; and it will convey to the readers for whom it is intended a juster estimate of Johnson than either of the two essays ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... Dr. Johnson pronounced a second marriage to be "The triumph of Hope over Experience." Others who are less epigrammatic affirm that to take a second partner is the highest compliment that can be paid to the departed first. In some cases ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... chapter of Rasselas we have an excellent story of an experimentalist in the art of flying. Dr. Johnson sketched perhaps from life, for we are informed that he once lodged in the same house with a man who broke his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... complexion of both depended, even more than it does with most men, on his company. He is acknowledged never to have 'talked for victory,' an evil and barbarous practice, which the Edinburgh wits seem to have caught from their great enemy and guest, Dr. Johnson; to have (like all good men) simply abominated talking about his own works, or indeed bookishly at all, full as his conversation was of literature; and, though a great tale-teller, to have been no monopoliser of the conversation in any way. He admits having been in youth and ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... I know any similar attack which would induce me to turn again,—unless it involved those connected with me, whose qualities, I hope, are such as to exempt them in the eyes of those who bear no good-will to myself. In such a case, supposing it to occur—to reverse the saying of Dr. Johnson,—'what the law could not do for me, I would do for myself,' be the consequences ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... break almost from the time of his advent in Vienna. Czerny, in his autobiography, gives an interesting picture of the devotion of Krumpholz, who attached himself to Beethoven much the same as did Boswell to Dr. Johnson. He was somewhat older than Beethoven, and his position as first violinist at the Court Theatre enabled him to be of much practical service to Beethoven, as he was widely known among the professional musicians, as well as the rich amateurs. He sounded Beethoven's praises far and wide: he ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... glad you write the word "lunch," and not "luncheon." I told FRED that—but he went to Johnson's Dictionary, and read out something about "Lunch" being only a colloquial form of "luncheon." Still, I don't care a little bit. Dr. JOHNSON lived so long ago, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various
... understanding, which enables me to bear misery, rather than selfishly live for myself alone. I am not the only character deserving of respect, that has had to struggle with various sorrows—while inferior minds have enjoyed local fame and present comfort.—Dr. Johnson's cares almost drove him mad—but, I suppose, you would quietly have told him, he was a fool for not being calm, and that wise men striving against the stream, can yet be in good humour. I have done with insensible human wisdom,—"indifference cold in wisdom's guise,"—and turn ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... till many years after the dispersion of that noble Harleian memorial of generous ardour among the public and private collections of England and the Continent (Dr. Johnson in his letter to Sir F. Barnard, 1768, says that many books passed direct into the Bibliotheque du Roi at Paris), that the Shakespeare revival led to an inquiry, on the one hand, into the literature connected with the Elizabethan period, and on the other to a partial discovery of how much ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... Dr. Johnson's reaction to Shakespeare's tragedies is a curious one, compounded as it is of deep emotional involvement in a few scenes in some plays and a strange dispassionateness toward most of the others. I suspect that his emotional involvement took root when he read Shakespeare as a boy—one remembers ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... Dunvegan Castle contains the room in which Dr. Johnson and Sir Walter Scott slept during their respective visits to the castle. The burly lexicographer would have little wind left for argument after he had toiled up the steep and narrow spiral stairway leading to the room. Formerly, so the smiling chief told me, the young lady chosen ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... of understanding the difference between a constitution and a government, Dr. Johnson, and all writers of his description, have always bewildered themselves. They could not but perceive, that there must necessarily be a controlling power existing somewhere, and they placed this power ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... authors, have long sunk into oblivion. The greatest of his contemporaries knew and acknowledged his transcendent merit, and since his death, there has not been one man of genius whose opinion of Fielding is recorded, that has not spoken of him with veneration and delight. Dr. Johnson, spite of a personal enmity, could not but concede his extraordinary powers. Lady Mary Wortley Montague reluctantly confessed that 'cousin Fielding' was the greatest original genius of the age; the fastidious Gray was charmed with him; and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... hired that carriage by the hour, and so am in no hurry. Your excuse for your irritability will be, I suppose, that it is constitutional, and not to be controlled. A selfish, paltry, miserable excuse! I have turned down a leaf in Dr. Johnson's works, and will read what he says in regard to tempers ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... 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, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... finger-tip the fast-vanishing inscription. It says, "Here lies Oliver Goldsmith." This, then, is the way the world reveres its great ones. Of what avail a monument to the poet in Westminster Abbey, dignified by the celebrated epitaph of Dr. Johnson, when his tomb is thus relegated to the domain of neglect and oblivion? Even the site at present indicated is "entirely conjectural:" the precise position of the poet's grave has ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... damp, dust and dirt are the chief enemies of books. At short intervals, books and shelves ought to be dusted by the amateur himself. Even Dr. Johnson, who was careless of his person, and of volumes lent to him, was careful about the cleanliness of his own books. Boswell found him one day with big gloves on his hands beating the dust out of his library, as was his custom. There is nothing so hideous as a dirty thumb-mark ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... son of Dr. Johnson's Boswell. The inimitable biographer was fortunate in his offspring. His sons inherited all the virtues of their father, and none of his foibles. The social good humor, the cleverness, the appreciation of learning, the joviality,—every good quality, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... It was Dr. Johnson who declared, rather ponderously, it is true, but none the less shrewdly, that "the irregular combinations of fanciful invention may delight a while by that novelty of which the common satiety of life sends us all in quest; but the pleasures of sudden wonder are soon exhausted and the many can ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... prize as 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." In January, 1861, Mr. ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... or no good in the Church is a great deal worse. There is something fine, however, about a heartily intolerant man: you like him, though you disapprove of him. Even if I were inclined to Whiggery, I should admire the downright dictum of Dr. Johnson, that the devil was the first Whig. Even if I were a Nonconformist, I should like Sydney Smith the better for the singular proof of his declining strength which he once adduced: 'I do believe,' he said, 'that if you were to put a knife into my hand, I should ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... probably have ensured the speedy triumph of Shere Ali and his lasting gratitude to Great Britain, now laid him under no sense of obligation[284]. He might have replied to Lord Lawrence with the ironical question with which Dr. Johnson declined Lord Chesterfield's belated offer of patronage: "Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Dr. Johnson, in his "Life of Swift," after citing with approval Delany's character of him, as he describes him to Lord Orrery, proceeds to say: "In the poetical works there is not much upon which the critic can exercise his powers. They are often humorous, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... were lungs so puffed with the wind of declamation, on moral and religious subjects, as now. We are tempted to implore these "word-heroes," these word-Catos, word-Christs, to beware of cant [Footnote: Dr. Johnson's one piece of advice should be written on every door: "Clear your mind of cant." But Byron, to whom it was so acceptable, in clearing away the noxious vine, shook down the building. Sterling's ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... us of the description of a net—"holes tied together by a string." As a contrast in descriptive style, we would quote Dr. Johnson on network: "Anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... speech in opposition to the proposed constitutional amendment. He used very strong language to express his abhorrence of the proposition: "It reminds me of that leg of mutton served for dinner on the road from London to Oxford, which Dr. Johnson, with characteristic energy, described 'as bad as bad could be, ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-dressed.' So this compromise—I adopt the saying of an eminent friend, who insists that it can not be called an 'amendment,' but rather ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... Boyse lying in bed with nothing but a blanket over him, and with his arms thrust through two holes in the blanket, so that he could write—perhaps a continuation of his poem on the Deity. But then we should be shown Boyse when he was spending the money collected by Dr. Johnson to get the poor scribbler's clothes out of pawn; and we should also be shown him, with his hands through the holes in the blanket, enjoying the mushrooms and truffles on which, as a little garniture for "his last scrap of beef," he had just laid ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... Tyranny,' defended, and greatly assisted to produce, that unjust and bloody war which finally severed from England that great country the United states of America, now the most powerful and dangerous rival that this kingdom ever had. The statue of Dr. JOHNSON was the first that was put into St. PAUL'S CHURCH! A signal warning to us not to look upon monuments in honour of the dead as a proof of their virtues; for here we see St. PAUL'S CHURCH holding up to the veneration ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... and sententious; some strain their powers for efforts of gaiety; some write news, and some write secrets—but to make a letter without affection, without wisdom, without gaiety, without news, and without a secret, is doubtless the great epistolic art. "-DR. JOHNSON. ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... culture in college is the ability to find promptly the information we want. "Next to knowing a thing," says Dr. Johnson, "is to know where to find it." No student can become a walking encyclopaedia, but he should learn while in college how to avail himself advantageously of reference books, libraries ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... baseless prejudices, uncompromising selfishness, irregular mental activity. The morbid element in his nervous system was also witnessed in the form of epilepsy, from which he suffered, more or less, during his whole life. The "vile melancholy" which Dr. Johnson inherited from his father, and which, to use his own expression, "made him mad all his life, at least not sober," never perverted nor hampered the exercise of his intellectual powers. He heard the voice of his distant mother calling "Sam"; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... being now at such a distance as not to interest an observer unprovided with a telespope, I thought it most prudent to gratify that ever-returning desire, which, according to Dr. Johnson, excites once a day a serious idea in the mind even of the most thoughtless. I accordingly retired to my own apartments, where I had taken care that dinner should be provided for myself and a friend, who, assenting to the propriety of allowing ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... a desire for locomotion was expressed. Dr. Johnson, in the enclosure behind St. Clement Danes, is very restive. I asked him if he would object to removal. "Sir," said the Little Lexicographer (as his sculptor has made him), "I should derive satisfaction from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... my son, as Dr. Johnson would have said, "free your mind from cant." For the critics, they have their business, and I mine; as the nursery ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... the nineteenth century the Handelian type of opera was the laughingstock of musical critics; they wondered how any audiences could have endured to sit through it, and why the fashionable society of London should have neglected native music for what Dr. Johnson defined as "an exotic and irrational entertainment." The modern reader's impression of an Italian opera of Handel's days is a story about some ancient or mediaeval hero whose very name is often to most people unknown; if he happens to be someone as famous as Julius Caesar, the familiar ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... a remark often quoted of Dr. Johnson, (whom I take to be almost as good authority as the gentle apostle of intolerance, Dr. Duigenan,) that he who could entertain serious apprehensions of danger to the church in these times, would have "cried fire in the deluge." This is more than ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... needless to do over again the work which was done, and well done, a hundred years since, by the writer whose able essay in vindication and exposition of the genuine character of Falstaff elicited from Dr. Johnson as good a jest and as bad a criticism as might have been expected. His argument is too thoroughly carried out at all points and fortified on all hands to require or even to admit of corroboration; and the attempt ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Samuel Johnson, the well-known English author and—character. It is related that on one occasion Dr. Johnson approached the fishwives at Billingsgate to purchase of their wares. The exact details of the story are not altogether clear in my memory, but, as I recall it, something the good Doctor said angered these women, for ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... following curious little document is the opinion of Lord Mansfield, when Attorney-General, upon Dr. Johnson's explanation ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... 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. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... are any remarks which deserve to be recorded for the benefit of mankind, they are those which have been expressed on a dying bed, when, unfettered by prejudice or passion, Truth shines forth in her real colours. Sir John Hawkins has recorded of Dr. Johnson, that when suffering under that disease which ended in his dissolution, he addressed his friends in the following words:—"You see the state I am in, conflicting with bodily pain and mental distraction. While you are in health ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... proposition of its power to originate mind), and he at length fell back upon this question, which he delivered with an honourable heat of defiance and indignation: "Well, can you tell me any man of intellect, great in science or philosophy, who accepted the miraculous?" I said, "With pleasure. Descartes, Dr. Johnson, Newton, Faraday, Newman, Gladstone, Pasteur, Browning, Brunetiere—as many more as you please." To which that quite admirable and idealistic young man made this astonishing reply—"Oh, but of course they had to say that; they were Christians." First he challenged ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... The members sat together about a table, and the conversation was quite general and very bright. The talk turned, during the evening, on Scotsmen. The Englishmen present seemed to have something left of the old prejudice about Scotland with which Dr. Johnson was possessed. They imputed to the modern Scotsmen the same thrifty habit and capacity for looking after himself that prevailed a hundred years before, when Dr. Johnson and John Wilkes, who quarrelled about everything ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... 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 ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... perfect; humanity cannot be penned up even in Shakespeare's brain. Like every other man of genius Shakespeare must have shown himself in his qualities and defects, in his preferences and prejudices; "a fallible being," as stout old Dr. Johnson ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... Dr. Johnson, the grandfather of young Verplanck, on the mother's side, came from Stratford to be President of Columbia College, the year after his grandson was born. To him, in an equal degree with his grandmother, we must give the credit of bringing forward the precocious ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant
... judgment to select me some strawberries,—you know that I am a great epicure in fruit,—and get me the new work Dr. Johnson has just published. There, are you contented? And now, tell me all about your horse; does he step well? Has he the true English head and shoulder? Are his legs fine, yet strong? Is he full of spirit and devoid ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... think.' Maude tossed her pretty curls. 'Mrs. Beeton is all right, but I will not be lectured by Dr. Johnson. Where was I? Oh yes—"'We must always remember that to manage a little well, is ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... this fact has been noted, but surely it is almost certain that in their talks about literature Phelippeaux must have described La Bruyere to Addison? Another contributor to the Spectator, Eustace Budgell, translated Theophrastus and knew La Bruyere's book. Dr. Johnson mentions that the French moralist is the source of Addison's effort, but English critical opinion then, and since, has held that La Bruyere wrote without any of the earnestness of the moral reformer. ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... 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
... Death, into eloquence—the eloquence of pure thought, touched gravely and afar off by emotion. In general, the atmosphere of his intellect is that lumen siccum which he loved to commend, "not drenched or bloodied by the affections." Dr. Johnson said that the wine of Bacon's writings ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... boiled till it dropped from the bone, a veal-pie, with plums and sugar, or the outside cut of a salt buttock of beef. With regard to drink, his liking was for the strongest, as it was not the flavour, but the effect that he desired." Mr. Smale's Account of Dr. Johnson's Journey into ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... agreeable conversation extended beyond the bounds of the University. Mrs. Thrale, in a letter to Dr. Johnson, writes thus: 'Are you acquainted with Dr. Leigh, {6} the Master of Balliol College, and are you not delighted with his gaiety of manners and youthful vivacity, now that he is eighty-six years of age? I never heard a more perfect or excellent pun than his, when some one told him how, in a late ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... the disease in his provinces, has thrown new light on the question; he specifies certain restrictions as to intercourse, which were forthwith to be removed, and declares his intention to modify the whole. In short, it is quite plain that, as Dr. Johnson has it in his last journal,—those regulations will, "in more countries than Russia, be useless to all but ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... 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 were fastidious, though ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... an Englishman's pride in England, as was prettily seen in his reply to Mrs. Thrale in the theatre at Versailles; "Now we are here what shall we act, Dr. Johnson? The Englishman at Paris?" "No, no; we will try to act Harry the Fifth"; and at bottom he thought that a free Englishman was too great a man to be patronized ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... great use to the world, and his "Evidences of the Christian Religion" not the least so. Dr. Johnson, in delineating his character as a writer, gives the following amiable picture of him:—"He employed wit on the side of virtue and religion. He not only made the proper use of wit himself, but taught it to others; and, from his time, it has been generally subservient to the cause ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... gospel truth whenever they could not be tested. The fact that whenever they could by any means be tested they were found to be false—even this did not dismay the biographer. Hawkins's favourite pastime was libelling the dead. He libelled Dr. Johnson, and Boswell promptly and most vigorously dealt with him; he libelled Purcell grossly—he deliberately devised slanderous tales of him. The biographers, with simple, childlike credulity, went on whenever possible ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... 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, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... is without some quality, by the due application of which he might deserve well of the world; and whoever he be that has but little in his power should be in haste to do that little, lest he be confounded with him that can do nothing.—DR. JOHNSON. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... a time of vigorous intellectual life, the period of Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, and Dr. Johnson. It was also a period of political development. The conditions seemed favorable for internal peace and for easy relations with the colonies. The long Jacobite movement had come to an end; George the Third was ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... name. The terrified cottager ejaculated a prayer, which, we may suppose, ensured her personal safety; while the enchanted implement of housewifery, tumbling from the bedstead, departed by the window with no small noise and precipitation. In a humorous fugitive tract, Dr. Johnson has been introduced as disputing the authenticity of an apparition, merely because the spirit assumed the shape of a teapot and a shoulder of mutton. No doubt, a case so much in point as that we have now quoted ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... opposed to the fact. And it is not so very long ago that such traditions were handed down to us. "What we forget," says the New York Evening Post, "is the short distance of time and space that separates us from our ferocious forefathers." Dr. Johnson in his 'Journey to the Western Islands,' relates the tradition that the Macdonalds—honored name to-day—surrounded the Culloden Church on Sunday, fastened the doors, and burnt the congregation alive. ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... are wainscoted in dark wood. Although the room is so small, there are numerous long tables, and old-fashioned, high-backed settles. One seat, in the corner farthest from the door, is marked with a little tablet, telling us that there was Dr. Johnson's chosen place. Several pictures of that noted gentleman adorn the walls. It always seems very much out of keeping with the quaintness of the room, to find it full of laughing, chattering Americans. A few quiet English clerks come there for their noon meal, but the majority of the ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... Dr. Johnson paid to Lichfield, the friends with whom he was staying missed him one morning at the breakfast-table. On inquiring after him of the servants, they understood he had set off from Lichfield at a very early hour, without mentioning to any of ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... Dr. Johnson's opinions are well known, in regard to this department of English literature, which, by his ridiculous parodies, he succeeded for a time in throwing into the shade, or, in the language of his admiring biographer, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... periodical work of "The Guardian" he had likewise some share; and, in 1713, he produced, what Dr. Johnson has called "the ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... and evil custom died out slowly in this kingdom. Even a great moralist like Dr. Johnson had something to say in its defence, and Sir Walter Scott, who might well have laughed to scorn any imputation of cowardice, was prepared to accept a challenge in his old age for a statement he had made in ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... some who believed in the future life of animals. Homer and the later Greeks, some of the Romans and early Christians held this view the last believing that God sent angels in the shape of birds to comfort sufferers for the faith. St. Francis called the birds and beasts his brothers. Dr. Johnson believed in a future life for animals, as also did Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge, Jeremy Taylor, Agassiz, Lamartine, and many Christian scholars. It seems as if they ought to have some compensation for ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... from reasoning on it as actual delusion (the strange notion, on which the French critics built up their theory, and on which the French poets justify the construction of their tragedies), or from denying it altogether (which seems the end of Dr. Johnson's reasoning, and which, as extremes meet, would lead to the very same consequences, by excluding whatever would not be judged probable by us in our coolest state of feeling, with all our faculties in even balance), that these few remarks will, I hope, be pardoned, if they should serve either ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... 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 the presence of ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... read what the world reads at the moment," said Dr. Johnson, giving the remark an ironical meaning when he added, "A man will have more gratification for his vanity in conversation from having read modern books than from having read the best works of antiquity." Nevertheless, one great difference between the ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James |
