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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
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James Boswell
Age: 54 †
Born: 1740
Born: October 18
Died: 1795
Died: May 19
Biographer
Diarist
Lawyer
Writer
Edinburgh
Scotland
James Boswell I
James
I Boswell
May
Smaller
Good
Wit
Pleasantry
Think
Innocence
Excellencies
Thinking
Innocent
Pleasantries
Species
Pun
Conversation
Suppressed
Among
Admitted
Part
Lively
More quotes by James Boswell
Those who would extirpate evil from the world know little of human nature. As well might punch be palatable without souring as existence agreeable without care.
James Boswell
No, Sir, claret is the liquor for boys port for men: but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy. In the first place brandy will do soonest for a man what drinking can do for him.
James Boswell
Many infidels have maintained that Ignorance is the mother of Devotion.
James Boswell
What a curious creature is man with what a variety of powers and faculties is he endued yet how easily is he disturbed and put out of order.
James Boswell
My father had declared a predilection for heirs general, that is, males and females indiscriminately.... I, on the other hand, had a zealous partiality for heirs male, however remote.
James Boswell
That favorite subject, Myself.
James Boswell
If a man is prodigal, he cannot be truly generous.
James Boswell
In an orchard there should be enough to eat, enough to lay up, enough to be stolen, and enough to rot on the ground.
James Boswell
In every picture there should be shade as well as light.
James Boswell
What an insignificant life is this which I am now leading!
James Boswell
When we know exactly all a man's views and how he comes to speak and act so and so, we lose any respect for him, though we may love and admire him.
James Boswell
We must take our friends as they are.
James Boswell
The man who stops making new friends eventually will have none.
James Boswell
My curiosity to see the melancholy spectacle of the executions was so strong that I could not resist it, although I was sensible that I would suffer much from it.... I got upon a scaffold near the fatal tree so that I could clearly see all the dismal scene.... I was most terribly shocked, and thrown into a very deep melancholy.
James Boswell
Dr Johnson said, the inscription should have been in Latin, as every thing intended to be universal and permanent, should be.
James Boswell
It is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it but all belief is for it.
James Boswell
My mind was, as it were, strongly impregnated with the Johnsonian ether.
James Boswell
Melancholy cannot be clearly proved to others, so it is better to be silent about it.
James Boswell
Dr. Johnson ... sometimes employed himself in chymistry, sometimes in watering and pruning a vine, and sometimes in small experiments, at which those who may smile, should recollect that there are moments which admit of being soothed only by trifles.
James Boswell
But what can a man see of a library being one day in it?
James Boswell