James Boswell

“I suppose no person ever enjoyed with more relish the infusion of this fragrant leaf than did Johnson.”

“For my own part I think no innocent species of wit or pleasantry should be suppressed: and that a good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation.”

“He who has provoked the lash of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.”

“What an insignificant life is this which I am now leading!”

“A page of my journal is like a cake of portable soup. A little may be diffused into a considerable portion.”

“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over. So in a series of acts of kindness there is, at last, one which makes the heart run over.”

“I have discovered that we may be in some degree whatever character we choose. Besides, practice forms a man to anything.”

“A good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation.”

“It is not every man who can be exquisitely miserable, any more than exquisitely happy.”

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

“There is nothing worth the wear of winning, but laughter and the love of friends.”

“I have found you an argument; I am not obliged to find you an understanding.”

“A companion loves some agreeable qualities which a man may possess, but a friend loves the man himself.”

“We must take our friends as they are.”

“My definition of man is a cooking animal. The beasts have memory, judgement, and the faculties and passions of our minds in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook.”

“If venereal delight and the power of propagating the species were permitted only to the virtuous, it would make the world very good.”