Tag: James Boswell

Today’s One-Liner (#160)

I read something from Boswells’ Life of Johnson almost every day. –James V. Schall, On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs:  Teaching, Writing, Playing, Believing, Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing 

Training in Recording

In the early  part of my acquaintance with him, I was so wrapt in admiration of his extraordinary colloquial talents, and so little accustomed to this peculiar mode of expression, that I found it extremely…

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 (#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/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 

Notice the Littlest

Nor is it always in the most distinguished achievements that men’s virtues or vices may be best discerned; but very often an action of small note, a short saying, or a jest, shall distinguish a…