Quotes by James Boswell

About James Boswell:

James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck is best known for the biography he wrote of one of his contemporaries, the English literary figure Samuel Johnson, which the modern Johnsonian critic Harold Bloom has claimed is the greatest biography written in the English language.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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.

James Boswell

Quoting : "Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.

James Boswell

I am so fond of tea that I could write a whole dissertation on its virtues. It comforts and enlivens without the risks attendant on spirituous liquors. Gentle herb! Let the florid grape yield to thee. Thy soft influence is a more safe inspirer of soc...

James Boswell

His OFELLUS in the Art of Living in London, I have heard him relate, was an Irish painter, whom he knew at Birmingham, and who had practiced his own precepts of economy for several years in the British capital. He assured Johnson, who, I suppose, was...

James Boswell

Nay, Sir, it was not the WINE that made your head ache, but the SENSE that I put into it' 'What, Sir! will sense make the head ache?' 'Yes, Sir, (with a smile,) when it is not used to it.

James Boswell

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

James Boswell

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

James Boswell

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.

James Boswell

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

James Boswell

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

James Boswell

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

James Boswell

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

James Boswell

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

James Boswell

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

James Boswell

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

James Boswell

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

James Boswell

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

James Boswell

We must take our friends as they are.

James Boswell

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.

James Boswell

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his...

James Boswell

Author Bio

  • NameJames Boswell
  • DescriptionScottish lawyer, diarist and author
  • BornOctober 18, 1740
  • DiedMay 19, 1795
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionAuthor
  • WorksLife Of Samuel Johnson