Missing the Mark
Every man believes that mistresses are unfaithful, and patrons capricious; but he excepts his own mistress, and his own patron. –Samuel Johnson, in James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson The tribe is likewise very numerous…
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
Amongst My Books
“… at least resolve, while you remain in any settled residence, to spend a certain number of hours every day amongst your books…”—Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson “Amongst” could…
Long Live Vivacity!
Depend upon it, Sir, vivacity is much an art, and depends greatly on habit.—Samuel Johnson, in A Johnson Sampler, edited by Henry Darcy Curwen. I’ve never thought about vivacity in this way …To master an…
Up to Me
Let us cease to consider what, perhaps, may never happen, and what, when it shall happen, will laugh at human speculation. We will not endeavour to modify the motions of the elements, or to fix…
Stolen at Gunpoint
I’m grateful to have come across Kari’s kind correspondence in a file this evening. Dear Mark, I just wanted to drop you a note to thank you for taking the time to write The Book…
By Little and Little
All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant…
One Person Can Change Everything for Us
And if his life was important, if it differed from other lives, it was because even its smallest, seemingly mutest events took on meaning, and acquired a resonance of their own, from Ludmila’s presence in…
Share the Wealth
It is the duty of every man to endeavour that something may be added by his industry to the hereditary aggregate of knowledge and happiness. To add much can indeed be the lot of few,…
Dr. Samuel Johnson
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…
Talk Less, Act Better
A living example often can have a stronger effect than thousands of theoretical teachings and rules.–Chan Khong Example is more efficacious than precept.–Samuel Johnson