[ After being absent from a tutorial at Oxford because he had been “sliding in Christ Church meadow” :] JOHNSON: I had no notion that I was wrong or irreverent to my tutor. BOSWELL: That, Sir, was great fortitude of mind. JOHNSON: No, Sir; stark insensibility.

[ In response to Boswell’s observation that George Berkeley’s theory of the nonexistence of matter could not be refuted, Johnson kicked a large stone and said :] I refute it thus .

[ Of a man who remarried after the death of his first wife, with whom he had been unhappy :] The triumph of hope over experience.

[ Of Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock:] New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.

[ Of John Hawkins :] Sir John, Sir, is a very unclubable man.

[ Of Lady Diana Beauclerk :] The woman’s a whore, and there’s an end on ’t.

[ Of Lord Mansfield, born in Scotland but educated in England :] Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.

[ Of Oliver Goldsmith’s apology in the London Chronicle for assaulting Thomas Evans :] He has, indeed, done it very well; but it is a foolish thing well done.

[ Of Shakespeare :] He that tries to recommend him by select quotations, will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen.

[ On a work by Congreve :] It is praised by the biographers. . . . I would rather praise it than read it.