Harold: You sure have a way with people.
Maude: Well, they’re my species!
—Harold and Maude, 1971 film
He was no philosopher of abstractions as were Berkeley, Descartes, Kant. He was a moral philosopher, perhaps, a moralist with a clear-eyed understanding of his fellow mortals, a humanist with a moving sympathy for all men, a pragmatist. His genius was for men, not mankind; and he was at home with all sorts of people. He would smile with the wise, dine with the rich, and live with the poor. But “nothing in Johnson,” writes Raleigh, “is more admirable than his tolerance of bad characters.” This tolerance, of course, is an aspect of his infinite compassion for the destitute, the helpless, the hopeless. His instinct was to find some good in everyone.
–Henry Darcy Curwen, A Johnson Sampler
