Poems List

The wild vicissitudes of taste.

Prologue at the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre

The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.
The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected; and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be superadded.
There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.

There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.

James Boswell Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) 27 March 1775

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.
There are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by.
There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified and new prejudices to be opposed.
There is a certain degree of temptation which will overcome any virtue. Now, in so far as you approach temptation to a man, you do him an injury; and, if he is overcome, you share his guilt.

There is a wicked inclination in most people to suppose an old man decayed in his intellects. If a young or middle-aged man, when leaving a company, does not recollect where he laid his hat, it is nothing; but if the same inattention is discovered in an old man, people will shrug up their shoulders, and say, ‘His memory is going.’

James Boswell Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) 1783

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