"I never knew any man who relished good eating more than he did. When at table, he was totally absorbed in the business of the moment; his looks seemed riveted to his plate; nor would he, unless when in very high company, say one word, or even pay the least attention to what was said by others, till he had satisfied his appetite; which was so fierce, and indulged with such intenseness, that while in the act of eating, the veins of his forehead swelled, and generally a strong perspiration was visible. To those whose sensations were delicate, this could not but be disgusting; and it was doubtless not very suitable to the character of a philosopher, who should be distinguished by self-command."

"I read Dr. Samuel Johnson all the time because he is my great hero as a literary critic and I have tried to model myself upon him all my life."

"Mrs. Digby told me that when she lived in London with her sister, Mrs. Brooke, they were every now and then honoured by the visits of Dr. Johnson. He called on them one day soon after the publication of his immortal dictionary. The two ladies paid him due compliments on the occasion. Amongst other topics of praise they very much commended the omission of all naughty words. 'What! my dears! then you have been looking for them?' said the moralist. The ladies, confused at being thus caught, dropped the subject of the dictionary."

"I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am."

"What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure."

"Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it."

"Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first."

"The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things — the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit."

"Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good."

"I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence."

"Hunting was the labour of the savages of North America, but the amusement of the gentlemen of England."

"His conversation does not show the minute-hand, but he strikes the hour very correctly."

"Hawkesworth said of Johnson, "You have a memory that would convict any author of plagiarism in any court of literature in the world.""

"The limbs will quiver and move after the soul is gone."

"As with my hat upon my head I walk'd along the Strand, I there did meet another man With his hat in his hand."

"Blown about with every wind of criticism."

"You see they'd have fitted him to a T."

"He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dullness in others."

"The potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice."

"I remember a passage in Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: "I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing."... There was another fine passage too which he struck out: "When I was a young man, being anxious to distinguish myself, I was perpetually starting new propositions. But I soon gave this over; for I found that generally what was new was false.""

"The true, strong, and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small."

"Johnson said that he could repeat a complete chapter of "The Natural History of Iceland" from the Danish of Horrebow, the whole of which was exactly thus: "There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island." 62 [Chap. lxxii.]"

"Goldsmith, however, was a man who whatever he wrote, did it better than any other man could do."

"He was so generally civil that nobody thanked him for it."

"Employment, sir, and hardships prevent melancholy."

"All this [wealth] excludes but one evil,—poverty."

"Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking."

"Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen."

"In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath."

"I never take a nap after dinner but when I have had a bad night; and then the nap takes me."

"Was ever poet so trusted before?"

"Let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known."

"Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young."

"I am a great friend to public amusements; for they keep people from vice."

"I do not know, sir, that the fellow is an infidel; but if he be an infidel, he is an infidel as a dog is an infidel; that is to say, he has never thought upon the subject."

"A very unclubable man."

"This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to."

"I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else."

"Sir, your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves."

"Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather political than religious."

"I am glad that he thanks God for anything."

"Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger at his death."

"Wretched un-idea'd girls."

"Gloomy calm of idle vacancy."

"The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honourable gentleman has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience."

"A fellow that makes no figure in company, and has a mind as narrow as the neck of a vinegar-cruet."

"The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth."

"To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example."

"Words are men's daughters, but God's sons are things."