"Dr. Johnson" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for her poetry as well as for her painting. Dryden wrote an ode in her memory which Dr. Johnson called "the noblest our language has produced." It begins: "Thou youngest virgin daughter of the skies." After praising her ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... exact site of the original works, for in "Nollekens and his Times" it is indicated as being at Cremorne House, further westward. One Martin Lister mentions a china manufactory in Chelsea as early as 1698, but the renowned manufactory seems to have been started about fifty years later. The great Dr. Johnson was fired with ambition to try his hand at this delicate art, and he went again and again to the place to master the secret; but he failed, and one can hardly imagine anyone less likely to have succeeded. The china service in the possession ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... idea, with as many appellations as the nine-titled Corcyra! 'Give me,' I demanded of a scholar some time ago, 'give me a definition of poetry.' 'Tres-volontiers;' and he proceeded to his library, brought me a Dr. Johnson, and overwhelmed me with a definition. Shade of the immortal Shakespeare! I imagine to myself the scowl of your spiritual eye upon the profanity of that scurrilous Ursa Major. Think of poetry, dear B——, think of poetry, and then think of Dr. ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... some book to read, and some piece of work to commence. The two lasted her till the spring, when, though she continued to work, she left off reading. Her favourite study was history, which she read through the medium of Dr. Goldsmith. Her favourite author in the belles lettres was, of course, Dr. Johnson. A worthier woman, or one more respected, was not to be ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the sixth chapter of Rasselas we have an excellent story of an experimentalist in the art of flying. Dr. Johnson sketched perhaps from life, for we are informed that he once lodged in the same house with a man who broke his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... Fleet Street"—one of Dr. Johnson's enjoyments—leads us to Whitefriars Street, on the east side of which, at No. 67, is the office of The Daily News, edited by Dickens from 21 Jany. to 9 Feby., 1846, and for which he wrote the original prospectus, and subsequently, ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... the hill, sufficiently flat and smooth on one side, and by sinking them according to their thickness, managed to get a tolerably even surface. Many other improvements followed; and although it was a poor place still, it would at the time of Dr. Johnson's visit to the highlands have been counted a good house, not to be despised by unambitious knight or poor baronet. Nor was the time yet over, when ladies and gentlemen, of all courtesy and good breeding, might be found ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... know what Dr. Johnson says: 'That a sick man is a scoundrel.' There is a basis of truth in that apparent cruelty. It is true that 'scoundrel' is rather a harsh term to apply to a man whose moral obliquities have not received the official stamp in open court by a jury of his peers. ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... the crime of being a Scotsman I may say that I cannot help it—I suppose I should come to you with hesitating footsteps. Perhaps it was rash of me to come at all, in spite of an invitation so kindly worded. Yet how gladly does any lover, not only of Dr. Johnson, but of all good literature, come to Lichfield. Four cathedral cities of our land stand forth in my mind with a certain magnetic power to draw even the most humble lover of books towards them—Oxford, Bath, Norwich, Lichfield, these four and no others. Oxford we all love and ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... for his especial benefit.—There is a natural tendency in many persons to run their adjectives together in TRIADS, as I have heard them called,—thus: He was honorable, courteous, and brave; she was graceful, pleasing, and virtuous. Dr. Johnson is famous for this; I think it was Bulwer who said you could separate a paper in the "Rambler" into three distinct essays. Many of our writers show the same tendency,—my friend, the Professor, especially. Some think it is in humble imitation of Johnson,—some ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... There are some who will say that St. Paul would not have condemned the Falstaff plays, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and almost everything that Shakspeare ever wrote; but there is no arguing against this. 'Every man,' said Dr. Johnson, 'has a right to his own opinion, and every one else has a right to knock him down for it.' But even granting that generosity and high spirit have made some progress since the days of Christ, allowance must be made for the lapse of two thousand years, during ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... have hired that carriage by the hour, and so am in no hurry. Your excuse for your irritability will be, I suppose, that it is constitutional, and not to be controlled. A selfish, paltry, miserable excuse! I have turned down a leaf in Dr. Johnson's works, and will read what he says in regard to ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... mixed motives, between convenience and affection, from which, Dr. Johnson says, most people marry, our hero commenced his courtship of the Lady Sarah Lidhurst. As the minds of both parties on the subject are pretty well known to our readers, it would be cruel to fatigue them with a protracted description of the formalities of courtship. It is sufficient ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... singled out by a tyrannous administration." Knowing that "their merits, not their crimes, make them the objects of Ministerial vengeance," they refused to pay a penny tax with the religious fervor of men doing battle for the welfare of the human race. Consider the dry common sense with which Dr. Johnson disposed of the alleged Tyranny of Great Britain: "But I say, if the rascals are so prosperous, oppression has agreed with them, or there has been no oppression"; and contrast it with the reverent spirit which pervades the writings ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... D, but the sale of a few trinkets, which I had fortunately secreted on my first arrest. How are we to exist, and what an existence to be solicitous about! In gayer moments, and, perhaps, a little tinctured by romantic refinement, I have thought Dr. Johnson made poverty too exclusively the subject of compassion: indeed I believe he used to say, it was the only evil he really felt for. This, to one who has known only mental suffering, appears the notion of a coarse mind; but I doubt whether, the first time we are alarmed by the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... punishes any neglect of prudence. If you think the senses final, obey their law. If you believe in the soul, do not clutch at sensual sweetness before it is ripe on the slow tree of cause and effect. It is vinegar to the eyes to deal with men of loose and imperfect perception. Dr. Johnson is reported to have said,[669]—"If the child says he looked out of this window, when he looked out of that,—whip him." Our American character is marked by a more than average delight in accurate perception, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... his pension we may look upon him as a lumbering vessel which has weathered many a strong sea and has now safely come to port. His life was henceforth easy. He received honorary degrees, first from Dublin and then from Oxford, so that he became Dr. Johnson. For two-and-twenty years he enjoyed his pension, his freedom and his honors; then, in 1784, surrounded by his friends, he died in London, and was buried in ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... sugar, or the outside cut of a salt buttock of beef. With regard to drink, his liking was for the strongest, as it was not the flavour, but the effect that he desired." Mr. Smale's Account of Dr. Johnson's Journey into Wales, 1816, ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... quarters at a public house. The York inns of the period had an unenviable reputation, and were widely different from the Queen's and Rossin of the present day. Some of my readers will doubtless remember John Gait's savage fling at them several years later. To parody Dr. Johnson's characterization of the famous leg of mutton, they were ill-looking, ill-smelling, ill-provided and ill-kept. In a word, they were unendurable places of sojourn for a man of fastidious tastes and ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... surely be pronounced a very foolish person who secures another's hatred at the price of a moment's gratification. It was a saying of Burnel, the engineer—himself one of the kindest-natured of men—that "spite and ill-nature are among the most expensive luxuries in life." Dr. Johnson once said: "Sir, a man has no more right to say a rude thing to another ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... schoolboy's muse was perhaps quite of the pedestrian order: but so also, the critics said, had been stern old Dr. Johnson's ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... up the different treatments of pneumonia that have been in fashion in our day; there must be seven or eight, and I am only afraid the next thing will be a sort of skepticism and contempt of remedies. Dr. Johnson said long ago that physicians were a class of men who put bodies of which they knew little into bodies of which they knew less, but certainly this isn't the fault of the medicines altogether; you and I know well enough they are often most stupidly used. If we blindly follow ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... by buying for about ten thousand pounds the choice library of Mr. Joseph Smith, who for many years was the British consul at Venice, and 'for seven or eight years the shops and warehouses of English booksellers were also sedulously examined, and large purchases were made from them. In this labour Dr. Johnson often assisted, actively as well as by advice.'[2] It is said the King expended during his long reign, on an average, about two thousand pounds a year in the purchase of books. In 1768 he despatched his illegitimate half-brother, Mr. Barnard, afterwards Sir Frederic Augusta ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... Dr. Johnson's sturdy self-respect led him to invent the Bookseller as a substitute for the Patron. My relations with you have enabled me to discover how pleasantly the Friend may replace the Bookseller. Let me record my sense of many ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... supposed, ascribed the authorship of one of the keenest to Shadwell. We are to conceive some new and immediate provocation as added to the old grudge, to call for a second attack so soon; for it was only a month later that the "MacFlecknoe" appeared; not in 1689, as Dr. Johnson states, who, mistaking the date, also errs in assuming the cause of Dryden's wrath to have been the transfer of the laurel from his own to the brows of Shadwell. "MacFlecknoe" is by common consent the most perfect and perfectly acrid ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... ensured the speedy triumph of Shere Ali and his lasting gratitude to Great Britain, now laid him under no sense of obligation[284]. He might have replied to Lord Lawrence with the ironical question with which Dr. Johnson declined Lord Chesterfield's belated offer of patronage: "Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... has gone out of sight. Yet without grasping it we cannot understand our past, nor, I will add, our future. Curiously enough, the best English books of the eighteenth century are crammed with it, yet modern culture cannot see it when it is there. Dr. Johnson is full of it; it is what he meant when he denounced minority rule in Ireland, as well as when he said that the devil was the first Whig. Goldsmith is full of it; it is the whole point of that fine poem "The Deserted Village," and is set out theoretically ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... then, as in his essay On Death, into eloquence—the eloquence of pure thought, touched gravely and afar off by emotion. In general, the atmosphere of his intellect is that lumen siccum which he loved to commend, "not drenched or bloodied by the affections." Dr. Johnson said that the wine of Bacon's writings was ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... of pleasure," observes Dr. Johnson, "is variety. Uniformity must tire at last, though ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... only other known book beside these two plays dedicated to Nell Gwynne is a very rare little volume entitled Janua Di'vorum: or The Lives and Histories of the Heathen Gods, Goddesses, & Demi-Gods, by Robert Whitcombe, published in 1678, and inscribed to 'The Illustrious Madam Ellen Guin'. Dr. Johnson's pungent remark to the effect that Dryden has never been equalled in the hyperbole of flattery except by Aphara Behn in her address to Nell Gwynne is quoted to triteness. But then at that time it was the fashion to riot in the wildest extravagances of compliment. Neither the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... says Dr. Johnson, overflowed with Whiggish principles, was ordered to be burnt by the House of Commons. This moved Steele to diffuse it by inserting it in the Spectator, which, as its author said in a letter to Burnet, conveyed ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... his collations, held in amazed memory by many editioneers, rarely descend to anything so humble as tea. One recalls a confused glamor of ortolans, trussed guinea-hens, strawberries reclining in a bowl carved out of solid ice, and what used to be known as vintages. It is a pity that Dr. Johnson died too soon to take ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... disputatious doctors otherwise forgotten. Yet, in respect to even these, we feel justified in assenting to the opinion of one abundantly capable of appreciating the character of Baxter as a writer. "What works of Mr. Baxter shall I read?" asked Boswell of Dr. Johnson. "Read any of them," was the answer, "for they are all good." He has left upon all the impress of his genius. Many of them contain sentiments which happily find favor with few in our time: philosophical and psychological disquisitions, which look ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... own penury with the opulence of others. A wise nature will take an opposite course and will cultivate the habit of looking rather at the round of the ladder of fortune which is below our own and realising the countless points in which our lot is better than that of others. As Dr. Johnson says, 'Few are placed in a situation so gloomy and distressful as not to see every day beings yet more forlorn and miserable from whom they may learn to rejoice in their ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Mr. Tazewell was Dorothea Elizabeth Waller, a daughter of Judge Benjamin Waller, of Williamsburg. We are told by Dr. Johnson, in the Lives of the Poets, that Benjamin, the eldest son of the poet Waller, was disinherited by his father as wanting common understanding, and sent to New Jersey. It was not, however, from this Benjamin—a name ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... sitting in his place who was supported only by a minority. This involved a constitutional right of great importance, and a question was mooted, whether expulsion constituted disqualification during the current parliament. The pen of Dr. Johnson was employed in proving the affirmative; his chief argument being, that the power of disqualification was necessary to the house of commons, for otherwise expulsion would not be a real, but a nominal punishment. Other pens were employed in proving the contrary; and among them was that of Junius, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... slightest doubt of Captain Rothesay's respectability," answered Dr. Johnson. Respectability! applied to the scions of a family which had had the honour of being nearly extirpated at Flodden-field, and again at Pinkie. Had the trusty follower of the Rothesays heard the term, she certainly ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... to them. Well, as a matter of fact, they do leave a large part of it. If they did not they would have no excuse for having subordinates. The reward of good work is more work. This is less of a hardship than it sounds. Sir James Barrie once quoted Dr. Johnson's statement that doubtless the Lord could have made a better fruit than the strawberry, but that he doubtless never did, and added to it that He doubtless could have created something that was more fun than hard work, but that He ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... new series opens well with Mr. Leslie Stephen's sketch of Dr. Johnson. It could hardly have been done better; and it will convey to the readers for whom it is intended a juster estimate of Johnson than either of the two essays of Lord Macaulay."—Pall ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... delight to the youth. So he read Longfellow and Tennyson as their poems appeared, but the children took possession of Dickens and Thackeray for themselves. Both were too modern for tastes founded on Pope and Dr. Johnson. The boy Henry soon became a desultory reader of every book he found readable, but these were commonly eighteenth-century historians because his father's library was full of them. In the want of positive instincts, he drifted into the mental indolence of history. So too, he ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... beauties shown. Portraits of Garrick,—that intensely interesting Stratford portrait,—Earl Spencer, Pitt, Earl Stanhope, Colonel St. Leger, George IV., Duke of Cumberland, George III., Earl Cathcart, Canning, Dr. Johnson, Fox, and several showings of himself, made up a body of work unsurpassed in importance by that of the president ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... anecdotes illustrative of the above, from a work intitled "Sketches of Field Sports, as followed by the Natives of India," from the reading of which we have derived much pleasure. The authority is Dr. Johnson, East ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... to Dr. Johnson and other authorities, was the first Whig. History tells us less about the first Radical—the first man who rebelled against the despotism of unintelligible customs, who asserted the rights of the individual ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... botanical classification of the weeds in the poetical garden, but the flowers still flourish, neglected and nameless. It is true, for example, that Scott had an incomparably stiff and pedantic way of dealing with his heroines: he made a lively girl of eighteen refuse an offer in the language of Dr. Johnson. To him, as to most men of his time, woman was not an individual, but an institution—a toast that was drunk some time after that of Church and King. But it is far better to consider the difference rather as a special merit, in that he stood for all those clean and bracing shocks of ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... least of all the art of letters. Apply the musical analogy once more to the instrument whereon literature performs its voluntaries. With a living keyboard of notes which are all incessantly changing in value, so that what rang true under Dr. Johnson's hand may sound flat or sharp now, with a range of a myriad strings, some falling mute and others being added from day to day, with numberless permutations and combinations, each of which alters the tone and pitch of the ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... rather ambiguously, "I think I never saw his countenance more indicative of high admiration than while reciting aloud from those productions."[222] In one of his letters Scott spoke of the "beautiful and feeling verses by Dr. Johnson to the memory of his humble friend Levett, ... which with me, though a tolerably ardent Scotchman, atone for a thousand of his prejudices."[223] Not only did he admire the great biography, but he called Boswell "such a biographer as no man ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... give a definition of nonsense, Dr. Johnson replied, "Sir, it is nonsense to bolt a ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... wish to live well together, they must not hold too much to logic, and suppose that everything is to be settled by sufficient reason. Dr. Johnson saw this clearly with regard to married people, when he said, "Wretched would be the pair above all names of wretchedness, who should be doomed to adjust by reason every morning all the minute detail ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... ideas and the physical senses, so that people might not only think or imagine them in the eighteenth century fashion, but see them on the stage, hear them from the orchestra, and feel them through the infection of passionate emotion. Dr. Johnson kicking the stone to confute Berkeley is not more bent on common-sense concreteness than Wagner: on all occasions he insists on the need for sensuous apprehension to give reality to abstract comprehension, maintaining, in fact, that ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... type of opera was the laughingstock of musical critics; they wondered how any audiences could have endured to sit through it, and why the fashionable society of London should have neglected native music for what Dr. Johnson defined as "an exotic and irrational entertainment." The modern reader's impression of an Italian opera of Handel's days is a story about some ancient or mediaeval hero whose very name is often to most people unknown; if he happens to be someone ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... another family who from long practice have acquired the habit of addressing each other in flowing periods of Johnsonian English. They never hesitate for an epithet, and manage to round off all their sentences in Dr. Johnson's best manner. I was following the hounds on foot one day, with the eldest daughter of this family, when, as we struggled through a particularly sticky and heavy ploughed field, she panted out, "Pray let us hasten ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... said that "all men are created equal," and the Tory Dr. Johnson, when he spoke of "the natural equality of man," used a curious eighteenth century phrase, of which a Greek scholar can see the origin; but it did not mean anything absurd, nor, on the other hand, did ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... out, as if anxious that they should see it at its best. It was all very well to know that Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night' was played in Middle Temple Hall, that the York and Lancaster roses grew here, that Dr. Johnson lived No. 1 Inner Temple Lane, and that Goldsmith died No. 2 Brick Court, Middle Temple; these actual events and people seemed far less real than the scenes between Pendennis and Fanny, John Westlock and ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... as an humble individual who is much concerned about the body. This little joke is purely a professional one. It must go no farther. I am afraid the public thinks uncharitably of undertakers, and would consider it a proof that Dr. Johnson was right when he said that the man who would make a pun would pick a pocket. Well; we all try to do the best we can for ourselves—everybody else as well as undertakers. Burials may be expensive, but so is legal redress. So is spiritual provision; I mean the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... Dr. Johnson calls morality "the doctrine of the duties of life." In this definition I agree. The doctor was a clever man. I very much admire the knock-down arguments that he was so fond of; it is the way in which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... the graces which sometimes conceal the poison of asps. How unsatisfactory and mournful the friendship between Voltaire and Frederic the Great, with all their brilliant qualities and mutual flatteries! How unmeaning would have been a friendship between Chesterfield and Dr. Johnson, even had the latter stooped to all the arts of sycophancy! The world can only inspire its votaries with its own idolatries. Whatever is born of vanity will end in vanity. "Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of that ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... proceeded to Christ's College, Cambridge, where his memory is still cherished; and a mulberry-tree, supposed in some way to be his, rather unkindly kept alive. Milton was not a submissive pupil; in fact, he was never a submissive anything, for there is point in Dr. Johnson's malicious remark, that man in Milton's opinion was born to be a rebel, and woman ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... we visit the house where John Knox, the great Scottish reformer, lived. Close by, in White Horse Close, is the inn where Dr. Johnson lodged in 1773, while in the churchyard hard by are the graves of Adam Smith and Dugald Stewart. It is not possible to feel indifferent to such associations. No grander figure can be found in the history of the Reformation than ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... correct, he never could get himself to throw his heart into the opposition made to Catholic Emancipation, strongly as he revolted from the politics and the instruments by means of which that Emancipation was won. I fancy he would have had no difficulty in accepting Dr. Johnson's saying about "the first Whig;" and it grieved and offended him that the "Via prima salutis" should be opened to the Catholic body from the Whig quarter. In spite of his reverence for the Old Religion, I conceive that on the whole he would rather have kept its professors beyond the pale of the Constitution ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... the Julia sailed, Dr. Johnson paid his last call. He was not quite so bland as usual. All he wanted was the men's names to a paper, certifying to their having received from him sundry medicaments therein mentioned. This voucher, endorsed by Captain Guy, secured his pay. But he would not have obtained ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... the finest perfume. In Europe a fixed oil, usually that of the bean or morerja nut, is employed. Cotton is soaked in this, and laid over layers of flowers, the oil being squeezed out so soon as impregnated with perfume. Dr. Johnson thus describes the culture ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... the word "coach" with the importance of one who, as Dr. Johnson saith of later date, is conscious of the dignity of putting horses to his chariot. The worshipful Master Maulstatute did not, however on this occasion, do Julian the honour of yoking to his huge family caroche the two "frampal jades" (to use the term of the period), ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... A livelihood, of course, we could make in England.... You speak of all the various strange things I am to see, and the amount of knowledge I shall involuntarily acquire, by this residence in America; but you know I am what Dr. Johnson would have considered disgracefully "incurious," and the lazy intellectual indifference which induced me to live in London by the very spring of the fountain of knowledge without so much as stooping my lips to it, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... straightforward. Naturally he did not offer any unnecessary encouragement to bores and dullards, but in his intercourse with these undesirables and wasters of his time he adopted none of the "offensive-defensive" methods of, say, Dr. Johnson or Lord Westbury. He armed himself with a cold correctitude of politeness, and lowered the social ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... appearance, that vain repetition of certain phrases and thoughts, which mars the work of sacred poets generally, and which has led to an unjustly strong censure being laid on them by critics, so different from each other as Dr. Johnson and Mr. Matthew Arnold. As the alleged Paganism of some of Herrick's sacred poems exists only in the imagination of readers, so the alleged insincerity is equally hypothetical, and can only be supported by ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Why, even old Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary days would write to his friend Langton, in Lincolnshire: "I shall delight to hear the ocean roar, or see the stars twinkle, in the company of men to whom Nature does not spread ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... discharged all the army of my former pursuits, fancies, and pleasures; a motley host! and have literally and strictly retained only the ideas of a few friends, which I have incorporated into a lifeguard. I trust in Dr. Johnson's observation, "Where much is attempted, something is done." Firmness, both in sufferance and exertion, is a character I would wish to be thought to possess: and have always despised the whining yelp of complaint, and the cowardly, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the beau-ideal of the trout genius. He was certainly the hermit-trout of the tarn. Such coolness, such strength, such size, such an outline, and then such sagacity. That trout was a triton among his brethren. A sort of Dr. Johnson among fishes. Ned Hinkley could imagine—for on such subjects his imagination kindled—how like an oracle must be the words of such a trout, to his brethren, gathering in council in their deep-down hole—or driven ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... about the degeneracy of us poor moderns, when compared with the men of pagan antiquity; which craze itself might possibly not have been generally known, except in connection with the little skirmish between him and Dr. Johnson, noticed in Boswell's account of the doctor's Scottish tour. "Ah, doctor," said Lord M., upon some casual suggestion of that topic, "poor creatures are we of this eighteenth century; our fathers were better men than we!" "O, no, my lord," was Johnson's reply; "we are quite as strong ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... worst the newspapers. Lecky thought Americans more prone to give themselves up to a purely literary life than are the English, and cited Prescott, Irving, and others. He spoke of "The Club," of which he is a member. It is that to which Sir Joshua Reynolds, Dr. Johnson, Burke, and Goldsmith belonged; its members dine together every fortnight; one black ball excludes. Speaking of Gladstone, he thought that he had greatly declined as a speaker of late years, and that no one had had such power in clouding truth and ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... seems to have been that they looked upon the Americans, not as equals, but as inferiors, as their subjects, and as having no rights that an Englishman was bound to respect. Even the celebrated moralist, Dr. Johnson, could say of the Americans, "They are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging." King George III., that obstinate but well-meaning monarch, and his ministers, no ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... details in the original are very gross. Dr. Johnson relates the story in the "Lives of the Poets," in his life of Sackville, Lord Dorset "Sackville, who was then Lord Buckhurst, with Sir Charles Sedley and Sir Thomas Ogle, got drunk at the Cock, in Bow Street, by Covent Garden, and going into the balcony exposed ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... its members this discrepancy, when he replied that the Government had purposely understated their resources at first. This may be all very fair in war, but it prevents a reasonable person placing the slightest confidence in anything official. Dr. Johnson did not believe in the earthquake at Lisbon for one year after the news reached London, and I shall not believe in the resources of the provinces until they prove their existence by raising the siege. I am very curious to discover what is thought of Paris by the world. ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... a Cumberland family, studied medicine at Edin., was an army surgeon, and on the peace settled in practice in London, where he became the friend of Dr. Johnson, Shenstone, and other men of letters. His first poem, Solitude, appeared in 1755. He subsequently went to the West Indies (St. Kit's), where he made a rich marriage, and pub. his chief poem, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... has been noted, but surely it is almost certain that in their talks about literature Phelippeaux must have described La Bruyere to Addison? Another contributor to the Spectator, Eustace Budgell, translated Theophrastus and knew La Bruyere's book. Dr. Johnson mentions that the French moralist is the source of Addison's effort, but English critical opinion then, and since, has held that La Bruyere wrote without any of the earnestness of the moral reformer. I have indicated, I hope, the hasty error ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... respected the Brethren. "In a variety of publications," said the London Chronicle, "he removed every aspersion against the Brethren, and firmly established their reputation." He was well known in higher circles, was the friend of Dr. Johnson, and worked in union with such well-known Evangelical leaders as Rowland Hill, William Romaine, John Newton, Charles Wesley, Hannah More, Howell Harris, and Bishop Porteous, the famous advocate of negro emancipation. Above all, he cleansed the Brethren's ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... of London can point to so many distinguished residents as this, the most favoured and the most favourite. Among them may be mentioned Sir Henry Vane, Dr. Butler (author of the "Analogy"), Lord Alvanley, Lord Chatham, Lord Erskine, Crabbe, Dr. Johnson, Joanna Baillie, Mrs. Barbauld, Constable, Romney, Sir James Mackintosh, Steele, Gay, Arbuthnot, Akenside, Thomas Day, Leigh Hunt, Keats, William Blake, John Linnell, Wilkie, Stanfield, ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... very ready to talk, but in defiance of Dr. Johnson's warning, his talk was all questions. He wanted to know everything about the neighbourhood—who lived in what houses, what were the distances between the towns, what harbours would admit what class of vessel. Smiling agreeably, he put Dickson ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... only shared her calamities, and the name of an Englishman was reverenced through Europe, no poet was heard amidst the general acclamation; the fame of our counsellors and heroes was entrusted to the gazetteer."—Dr. Johnson's Life ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... with such worthies as Aristotle and Plato, Horace and Richard Baxter, Petronius Arbiter and Blaise Pascal, Ulric von Huetten and Boileau, Hurdis and Hurd, Dr. Arnold and Montaigne, Harris of Salisbury and his famous uncle, Burke and "John Buncle," Montesquieu and Sir Philip Sidney, Dr. Johnson and the two Wartons, George Gascoyne and Spenser's friend Gabriel Harvey, Puttenham and Webbe, George Herbert and George Sand, Petrarch and Pinciano, Vida and Julius Caesar Scaliger, Pontanus and Savage Landor, Leigh ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... a trivial one compared with others, but not to be despised, was his punctuality. He always carried two watches,—I doubt if he told why, any more than Dr. Johnson told what he did with the orange-peel,—but probably with reference to this virtue. He was as much to be depended upon at the appointed time as the solstice or the equinox. There was another point I have heard him speak of as an important rule with him; ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... [3] Dr. Johnson, it is well known, was a firm believer in ghosts, as the following extract will show:—"That the dead are seen no more," said Imlac, "I will undertake to maintain, against the concurrent and unvaried ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... transportation to an equal sky, the dog has better treatment on earth than most authors. And Mr. Nutt and the Messrs. Constable have done their best; and everyone knows how good is that best. And the wonder is, as Dr. Johnson remarked (concerning a dog, by the way), not that the thing is done so well, but that it should ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... England was not yet completely English, so that he is only half-conscious of his nation. Wordsworth is English, but he was a recluse. Browning is English, but he lived apart or abroad, and was a tourist of genius. The most English of all our great men of letters, next to Shakespeare, is certainly Dr. Johnson, but he was no great poet. Shakespeare, it may be suspected, is too poetic to be a perfect Englishman; but his works refute that suspicion. He is the Englishman endowed, by a fortunate chance, with matchless powers of expression. ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... that the poem at the end of "Through the Looking Glass" is an acrostic giving the name of the original Alice—viz., Alice Pleasance Liddell. In return for which we were shown a copy of the first edition of "Alice in Wonderland." Here, too, we dallied for some time over a first edition of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, and were pleased to learn that the great doctor was no more infallible in proofreading than the rest of us, one of our hosts pointing out to us a curious error by which some words beginning in COV had slipped in ahead of words ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... black hair behind, somewhat pompous in his manner, with a clear musical utterance, which enabled one to listen to him without effort. As a divine, he seemed never to have had any difficulty on any subject; he was so clear or so shallow, that he saw to the bottom of all his thoughts: or, since Dr. Johnson tells us that "all shallows are clear," we may perhaps distinguish him by both epithets. Revelation to him, instead of being the abyss of God's counsels, with its dim outlines and broad shadows, was a flat, ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... baldness, and colorless hair that she wore in an austere curl on each side of her face, and a menacing little topknot on her occiput. She had been a Unitarian and a governess, was fond of good long words, like Dr. Johnson, and very censorious. ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... sententious; some strain their powers for efforts of gaiety; some write news, and some write secrets—but to make a letter without affection, without wisdom, without gaiety, without news, and without a secret, is doubtless the great epistolic art. "-DR. JOHNSON. ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... great hall of William Rufus,' can forget how often it has been the theatre of those mighty conflicts, in which, however slowly and reluctantly, error and prejudice have been compelled to relax their hold on the human mind? Dr. Johnson has spoken to us, in his usual stately phrase, of patriotism re-invigorated and of piety warmed amid the scenes of Marathon and Iona; but where is the Marathon which appeals to us so forcibly as the field consecrated by the blood of a Hamden or a Falkland? and where the Iona ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... did not captivate her fancy. "Did Dr. Johnson in his paradise in Fleet Street love the pavements and the walls?" she questioned. "I doubt that," she added; "the place, the privileges, don't mix in one's love as is done by the ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... his kittens; and the great general, Lord Heathfield, would often appear on the walls of Gibraltar, at the time of the famous siege, attended by his favorite cat. Cardinal Richelieu was also fond of cats; and when we have enumerated the names of Cowper and Dr. Johnson, of Thomas Gray and Isaac Newton, and, above all, of the tender-hearted and meditative Montaigne, the list is far from complete of those who have bestowed on the feline race some portion ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... imagination—quite undeveloped, indeed, and, I believe, suppressed by the requirements of his business relations. At the same time, Hector knew that he cherished not a little indignation against the insolence of the good Dr. Johnson in regard to both Ossian and his humble translator, Macpherson, upholding the genuineness of both, although unable to enter into and set forth the points of the argument on either side. As to Hector, ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... Dr. Johnson calls portrait painting "that art which is employed in diffusing friendship, in reviving tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... season, in regard to what, from their individual standpoint, constitutes the public weal. Love me, love my dog; subscribe to all my opinions; follow all my political changes or I disown you,—when people guide their conduct by this principle all pairs of friends, except such a one as Boswell and Dr. Johnson's, sooner or later must separate. Taine is an observer, an investigator, a critic; and having devoted himself in turn to travel and to the study of metaphysics, of art and of literature, he has ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... Catholic Church, the impression is almost universal in China among natives and foreigners alike that, if a Chinese becomes a Catholic, the Church will stand by him through thick and thin, in time and in eternity. There are, indeed, exceptions. Dr. Johnson, of Ichou-fu, told me of a Roman Catholic Christian who, during the Boxer troubles, stealthily moved his goods into Ichou-fu, burned his house, and then put in a claim for indemnity. The heathen neighbours, when asked to pay, informed the priest. He summoned the man, who ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... all the subjects that afford opportunities for the satiric pen in the Metropolis, perhaps there is none more abundant or prolific than that of Quackery. Dr. Johnson observes, that "cheats can seldom stand long against laughter." But if a judgment is really to be formed from existing facts, it may be supposed that times are so materially changed since the residence of that able ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... in the neighbourhood. When the Tauchnitz editions have been exhausted, and when the stranger has mastered Cervantes and Lope de Vega, Espronceda, Larra, and Rivas, there is always that book which Dr. Johnson loved, the street, or that lighter literature which Moore sings, "woman's looks," to fall back upon. I am afraid some prudes may be misjudging my character on account of the frequency of my allusions to the sex lately; but I beg them to recollect that this is ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... genius have suffered from spasmodic and choreic movements, notably Lenau, Montesquieu, Buffon, Dr. Johnson, Santeuil, Crebillon, Lombardini, Thomas Campbell, Carducci, Napoleon, ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... the works of no single author in the wide range of British literature, not excepting, perhaps, even Addison, contain a richer and more varied fund of rational entertainment and sound instruction than those of Dr. Johnson. A correct edition of his works must, therefore, be an acceptable contribution to the mass of national literature. That the present edition has, perhaps, fairer claims on public approbation than most preceding ones, we feel ourselves justified in asserting, without envious detraction of those who ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... Dr. Johnson says in his "Tour to the Hebrides": "We are now treading that illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... I suppose,' said the young man. 'A little further on is the church of St. Clement Danes, where Dr. Johnson used to attend divine service. About here stands ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... Gennerel Wolf: wot a nobel deth to die, and how much happier than to live, when one considers the cairs and miseries of this life; and sech has bin the oppinion of wiser fokes than y'r humble servent. Being in companie on Thersday sennite with that distingwish'd riter, Dr. Johnson,—whose admir'd story of Raselass I sent you new from ye press, but who I am bound to confesse is less admirable as a fine gentlemann than as an orther, his linning siled and his kravatt twisted ary, and his manners wot in a more obskure personn wou'd be thort ungenteel,—he made ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... with the most brilliant execution, a sonato on the pianoforte, in the presence of Dr. Johnson, turning to the philosopher, took the liberty of asking him if he was fond of music? "No, madam," replied the doctor; "but of all noises, I think music is the ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... Byron, Clarissa,—females in Richardson, who, according to Dr. Johnson, 'taught the passions to move at the command of virtue.' I trust for your sake that Dr. Johnson did not err in that assertion, for I found all these females at night in your ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the World, laughing, "I shall have to nickname you Dr. Johnson Redivivus. I believe, were the subject under discussion, you would admire the coiffure of the Furies. It would occur to you that it ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... genuine practical wisdom, her lofty idealism of thought, her profound contempt for all the weak shams and petty frivolities of life, Mrs. Belle Etoile is a slave! "They who submit to drink as another pleases, make themselves his slaves," says that Great Mogul of sentences, Dr. Johnson; and in this sense Mrs. Belle Etoile is a slave indeed. The fetters gall her, but she has not courage to shake them off. Her mistress is her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Colisle, a coarse, vulgar, half-bred woman, whose husband acquired a sudden wealth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... pursued my walk, it occurred to me that this childish incident suggested an answer to the question asked by Dr. Johnson, "What becomes of all the clever children?" Too often, it is to be feared, are the precious human buds sacrificed to the same mistaken zeal that led to the destruction of the roses which had been expected with so much pleasure by their little owner. Perhaps ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... writing-folk to-day Like those whose names, in days gone by, Upon the scroll of fame stood high. And when I think of Smollett's tales, Of waspish Pope's ill-natured rails, Of Fielding dull, of Sterne too free, Of Swift's uncurbed indecency, Of Dr. Johnson's bludgeon-wit, I must confess I'm ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... business, regardless of his own pleasure, could not have been exceeded by a merchant engrossed in lucrative trade. The many pithy and racy sayings recorded of him show an insight into men's characters and the realities of life not unworthy of Dr. Johnson. His simplicity, kindliness, and charity endeared him to his subjects. His undaunted courage and readiness to undertake sole responsibility, not only during the panics of the Gordon riots and of the impending French invasion, but in many a political crisis, compelled the respect of all his ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... retired in 1868 with the title of C.B. His wife, Eliza Barron, was the youngest daughter of Mr. E. Barron, a gentleman of Norwich, the son of a rich saddler, or leather-seller, in the Borough, who, when a child, had been patted on the head, in his father's shop, by Dr. Johnson, while canvassing for Mr. Thrale. Jenkin had been introduced to the Austins by a letter from Mrs. Gaskell, and was charmed with the atmosphere of their choice home, where intellectual conversation was happily united with kind and courteous manners, without any pretence or affectation. 'Each of the ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... though such opinions are of necessity commonly crude, and sometimes absurd, they, on the other hand, frequently display a degree of feeling, and occasionally of knowledge, that surprises you. It may be true indeed, as Dr. Johnson said, with some illiberality, of our brethren across the Tweed, that though "every man may have a mouthful, no one has a belly full;" but it still marks a degree of national refinement, that any attention whatever is bestowed upon such subjects. This smattering of knowledge, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... Dr. Johnson once took Bishop Percy's little daughter on his knee, and asked her what she thought of the "Pilgrim's Progress." The child answered that she had not read it. "No?" replied the Doctor; "then I would not give one farthing for you," and he set her down and took no further ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... friendship more tender, or more unpolluted by interest or by vanity, never existed. Love had no place at all in the connection, nor had he any rival but my mother." The young Hester afterwards became the famous Mrs. Thrale, to all the varied incidents of whose long and close friendship with Dr. Johnson the world-Wide renown of that great man has given a universal publicity. The relation of patroness, sustained with such signal grace and generosity, and with such soothing and inspiring effect, by many queenly ladies in former times, is virtually obsolete now. But it has left memorials never ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... Londoners called lately,—one a Mr. William Jerdan, about seventy years old, a literary man, who for fifty years has been familiar with the best society in London, and knows everybody for whom one cares to ask. He is a perfect mine of rich memories. He pleased me mightily, and made me think of Dr. Johnson. Rose sat on his knee, and gazed with unwinking, earnest eyes into his face. He said he never saw anything like it except the gaze of Talleyrand (whom he knew very well). He said that Talleyrand undertook to look at a man and not allow a man to look ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... true that it (Gustave's poetry) has not gained a wide audience among the public. But with regard to poetry nowadays, there are plenty of persons who say as Dr. Johnson said of the verse of Spratt, "I would rather ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Day of Judgment Paulus the Lawyer Lindsay Epigrams by Thomas Sheridan. On a Caricature On Dean Swift's Proposed Hospital, etc., To a Dublin Publisher Which is Which Byron On some Lines of Lopez de Vega Dr. Johnson On a Full-length Portrait of Beau Nash, etc., Chesterfield On Scotland Cleveland Epigrams of Peter Pindar Edmund Burke's Attack on Warren Hastings On an Artist On the Conclusion of his Odes The Lex Talionis upon Benjamin West Barry's Attack upon Sir Joshua Reynolds On the Death of Mr. Hone ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... which in the highest degree adorn it, without diminishing its strength. We must look for the source of his injustice in the envy of his temper. When Garrick was named a Candidate for admission into the Literary Club, Dr. Johnson told Mr. Thrale he would black-ball him. "Who, Sir? Mr. Garrick! Companion of your Youth! your acknowledged Friend!" "Why, Sir, I love my little David better than any, or all of his Flatterers love ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... of the town on the Newhaven road belonged to the Shelleys, and Dr. Johnson once stayed here on his way ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... the days of Swift and Dr. Johnson, and the modern method, which seeks to influence opinion by means of a short, pointed story, is certainly a gain in persuasiveness and pictorial vigor. It is hard to say what the dean of Saint Patrick's would have thought of The Battle of Dorking, or Ginx's Baby, or Lord ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... understanding, which enables me to bear misery, rather than selfishly live for myself alone. I am not the only character deserving of respect, that has had to struggle with various sorrows—while inferior minds have enjoyed local fame and present comfort.—Dr. Johnson's cares almost drove him mad—but, I suppose, you would quietly have told him, he was a fool for not being calm, and that wise men striving against the stream, can yet be in good humour. I have ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... When Dr. Johnson remarked that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel he was not belittling the value of love of country as a force in the lives of men, but to the contrary, was pointing out that a profession of patriotism, unaccompanied by good works, was the mark of a man not to be trusted. ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... brother Poet. There is no reason, as you further point out, why you should not organise a whole Series of Commemorative Birthday Entertainments, as you think of doing, on the same plan, and with BEETHOVEN, MACAULAY, Dr. JOHNSON, and WARREN HASTINGS, the celebrities you mention, to begin upon, you ought to have no difficulty in working in the solo on the big drum, the performance of the Learned Hyaena, the Japanese Twenty-feet Bayonet-jump, and the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... in the world who ever loved London for itself? Did Dr. Johnson, in his paradise of Fleet Street, love the pavement and the walls? I doubt that—whether I ought to do so or not—though I don't doubt at all that one may be contented and happy here, and love much in ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... very unusual in him rebuked his nephew for saying 'metam['o]rph[)o]sis', and Dr. Johnson, had he been living, would have rebuked Macaulay. For the sake of our poets we ought to save 'apoth['e][)o]sis', which is in some danger. Garth ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... charger. The dandy mare, we suppose, has many long years ago made fat the great-grandfathers of the present race of dogs; and old Scroggins, we imagine, has been trod to pieces in boots and shoes, the very memory of which departed long, long before they were paid for. Of old Scroggins—as Dr. Johnson says—and of his virtues, let us indulge ourself in the recollection. Though not formed in the finest mould, or endowed with the extremity of swiftness, his pace was sure and steady—equal to Hannibal in endurance of fatigue; and, like that celebrated ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... it should not be, if for no other reason, for this—that the chance of writing "Tetty" as a title is a kind of facile literary opportunity; it shall be denied. The Essay owes thus much amends of deliberate care to Dr. Johnson's wife. But, indeed, the reason is graver. What wish would he have had but that the language in the making whereof he took no ignoble part should somewhere, at some time, treat his ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... a race of gentle folk Who dwell in Chiswick, well content In houses aged as the oak, But not unpleasing at the rent; They look across the sunny stream As Dr. JOHNSON used to look, And all their lives are one long dream, Though none of them has got a cook, And there are whispers in the camp, "It's jolly, but it is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... pleasantest ease, that creation is an act of pure enjoyment. Beethoven's sketch-books tell a different story; so do also Balzac's proof-sheets and the manuscripts of Pope's version of the Iliad and Odyssey in the British Museum. Dr. Johnson speaking of Milton's MSS. observed truly: "Such reliques show how excellence is acquired." Goethe in writing to Schiller asks him to return certain books of "Wilhelm Meister" that he may go over them A FEW TIMES before sending them to the press. And on re-reading ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... letters and verses to her published, and pamphlets made even of her sayings and jests. Furthermore, it drove out of England, for that season, the Italian Opera, which had carried all before it for ten years." Dr. Johnson, in his Life of the Author, says, that Herring, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, censured the opera, as giving encouragement, not only to vice, but to crimes, by making the highwayman the hero, and dismissing him at last unpunished; and adds, that it was ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... attempt at a novel. For distinction of style and beauty of thought it may be compared with the greatest of historical romances. If it was the least successful of his books, the failure can be assigned to the absence of women, or at least of love, which ever since Dr. Johnson's definition, if not before, has been expected in a novel. The scene is laid in the neighbourhood of his favourite Derreen, and the period is the middle of the eighteenth century. The real hero is an English Protestant, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... couldn't write four lines in verse, no, not to save me from being shot. A man cannot have all the advantages of life. Who would not be poor if he could be sure of possessing genius, and winning fame and immortality, sir? Think of Dr. Johnson, what a genius he had, and where did he live? In apartments that, I daresay, were no better than these, which, I am sure, gentlemen, are most cheerful and pleasant," says the Colonel, thinking he had offended us. "One of the great pleasures ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... occasions. Thus one is not surprised to find the future Charles II. professing to be his father's 'most humble and most obedient son and servant,' or to note how that very complete letter-writer, James Howell, claimed to be the Countess of Sunderland's 'most dutiful servant.' Dr. Johnson did well to announce himself haughtily as Chesterfield's 'most humble, most obedient servant;' while what could Sir Walter Scott be to his Duke of Buccleuch other than 'your Grace's truly obliged and grateful'? A similar sense ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... greatly assisted to produce, that unjust and bloody war which finally severed from England that great country the United states of America, now the most powerful and dangerous rival that this kingdom ever had. The statue of Dr. JOHNSON was the first that was put into St. PAUL'S CHURCH! A signal warning to us not to look upon monuments in honour of the dead as a proof of their virtues; for here we see St. PAUL'S CHURCH holding up to the veneration ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... intrude it on the public? We have plenty of bad books already, that have just gasped for breath and died. The last paragraph I particularly object to, it is so full of vanity. Your male friends will still treat you like a woman; and many a man, for instance Dr. Johnson, Lord Littleton, and even Dr. Priestley have insensibly been led to utter warm eulogiums in private that they would be sorry openly to avow without some cooling explanatory ifs. An author, especially a woman, should be cautious, lest she too hastily swallows the crude praises which partial ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... will always prize as it deserves. It is a well-worn, well-read volume, of no value whatever as an edition,—but it belonged to Abraham Lincoln. It is his copy of "The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., to which is prefixed the life of the author by Dr. Johnson." It bears the imprint on the title-page of J.J. Woodward, Philadelphia, and was published in 1839. Our President wrote his own name in it, and chronicles the fact that it was presented to him "by ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... unusual intellectual tension. Mrs. Austin remembered, in the early days of the marriage, the three brothers, John, Charles, and Alfred, marching to and fro, each with his hands behind his back, and 'reasoning high' till morning; and how, like Dr. Johnson, they would cheer their speculations with as many as fifteen cups of tea. And though, before the date of Fleeming's visit, the brothers were separated, Charles long ago retired from the world at Brandeston, and John ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... begging the question to assume that whatever Shakespeare did was perfect; humanity cannot be penned up even in Shakespeare's brain. Like every other man of genius Shakespeare must have shown himself in his qualities and defects, in his preferences and prejudices; "a fallible being," as stout old Dr. Johnson knew, "will ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... which such learning may not be carried. The limit to improvement is not so much in the nature of the subject, as in the powers of the mind, and in the inducements to exert them upon a theme so humble and so uninviting. Dr. Johnson suggests, in his masterly preface, "that a whole life cannot be spent upon syntax and etymology, and that even a whole life would not be sufficient." Who then will suppose, in the face of such facts and confessions as have been exhibited, that either in the faulty ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... that old town Fanny Burney, the friend of Mrs. Thrale and Dr. Johnson, the author of novels like 'Evelina,' which people even read nowadays, was born on the 13th of June, 1752. She grew up low of stature, of a brown complexion. One of her friends called her the dove, which she thought was from the colour of her eyes—a ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... is from this sad class more than any other that the vast army of drunkards and opium-eaters is recruited. The hypochondriacs belong to the class so well described by that brilliant specimen of them, Dr. Johnson,—those who can practise ABSTINENCE, but not TEMPERANCE. They cannot, they will not be moderate. Whatever stimulant they take for relief will create an uncontrollable appetite, a burning passion. The temperament itself lies in the direction of insanity. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... that crowded, bustling heart of the world, and I hope some day to have the pleasure of seeing you there—of seeing all of you, my friends. I will take you to my favorite haunt, the Cheshire Cheese, in Fleet Street, where the great and learned Dr. Johnson was wont to foregather. But I have much to do before I can return to England. The task that brought me to this barbarous country—this land of snow and ice—is of a most peculiar and difficult nature. I will take ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... or closing, with a Walter Pater or a Jules Lemaitre for challenger, the betting has run on the impressionist. But in 1817 Hazlitt had all the odds against him when he stood up and accused the great Dr. Johnson of having made criticism 'a kind of Procrustes' bed of genius, where he might cut down imagination to matter-of-fact, regulate the passions according to reason, and translate the whole into logical ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt |
