Today’s One-Liner (#271)
We have less reason to be surprised or offended when we find others differ from us in opinion, because we very often differ from ourselves. –Samuel Johnson, Adventurer 107, cited in Paul Fussell, Samuel Johnson…
Tag: Paul Fussell
Today’s One-Liner (#266)
[Samuel Johnson] used the conventions and mechanisms of Grub Street—writing rapidly, writing to order, writing in a standard genre—to generate literature, happily defined by Ezra Pound as “news that stays news.” –Paul Fussell, Samuel Johnson…
Why Read, Why Write
Books without the knowledge of life are useless…for what should books teach but the art of living? —Dr. Samuel Johnson, A Johnson Sampler, edited by Henry Darcy Curwen, p. 44. The only end of writing…
Both/And
Like other works, [Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Poets] is concerned with the nature, and, more importantly, the limits of human achievement. It assumes what its surrounding works assume: The continuity and dignity of the…
How to Save Energy
But whatever be the motive of insult, it is always best to overlook it, for folly scarcely can deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect. –Samuel Johnson, quoted in Paul Fussell, Samuel Johnson and the…
Acting on This Could Save Some Energy
But whatever be the motive of insult, it is always best to overlook it, for folly scarcely can deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect. –Dr. Samuel Johnson, quoted in Paul Fussell, Samuel…