Tag: Samuel Johnson

Today’s One-Liner (#112)

“He knows how to read better than any one; he gets at the substance of a book directly; he tears out the heart of it.” –Mrs. Knowles, on Samuel Johnson, in James Boswell, The Life…

Today’s One-Liner (#105)

Be not too hasty to trust, or to admire, the teachers of morality:  they discourse like angels, but they live like men. –Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas: Prince of Abyssinia

Today’s One-Liner (#86)

I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise. –Dr. Samuel Johnson, quoted by James Boswell in The Life of Samuel Johnson

Thank You, Biographers!

Biography is, of the various kinds of narrative writing, that which is most eagerly read, and most easily applied to the purposes of life.  –Samuel Johnson, The Idler, 84 in A Johnson Sampler, edited by…

Writing and Reading Inter-Are/2

Johnson made such chains of learned reference in his writing, and his written works are the outgrowth of the kind of reading Johnson did, in which fragments of writing can be distributed under preexisting topics…

Writing and Reading Inter-Are/1

When a man writes from his own mind, he writes very rapidly.  The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library…

Today’s One-Liner (#20)

Consider, Sir, how insignificant this will appear a twelve-month hence. –Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell,  The Life of Samuel Johnson 

Appreciating Jack Appreciating

Jack Kerouac, Selected Letters: 1940-1956, v. 1 As I’m convinced of the the utility of “pulling”* from my reading, I found the following gems in some of Kerouac’s letters up till  he had to deal…

Perduring Truth

It is, indeed, not necessary to shew by many instances what all mankind confess, by an incessant call for variety, and restless pursuit of enjoyments, which they value only because unpossessed.  –Dr. Samuel Johnson, The…