The Life of Samuel Johnson: LL. D. Including a Journal of His Tour to the Hebrides

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John Murray, 1844
 

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Page 133 - Anatomy of Melancholy,' he said, was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.
Page 34 - Sir. you do not know it to be good or bad till the judge determines it. I have said that you are to state facts fairly; so that your thinking. or what you call knowing a cause to be bad. must be from reasoning. must be from your supposing your arguments to be weak and inconclusive.
Page 252 - By inscribing this slight performance to you, I do not mean so much to compliment you as myself. It may do me some honour to inform the public, that I have lived many years in intimacy with you. It may serve the interests of mankind also to inform them, that the greatest wit may be found in a character, without impairing the most unaffected piety.
Page 206 - Why, Sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment.
Page 304 - ... of one of the ablest lawyers in the kingdom ;' and he will read it to him (laughing all the time). He believes he has made this will ; but he did not make it: you, Chambers, made it for him. I trust you have had more conscience than to make him say, ' being of sound understanding ;' ha, ha, ha ! I hope he has left me a legacy. I'd have his will turned into verse, like a ballad.
Page 250 - Sir, this is false reasoning; because every cause has a bad side: and a lawyer is not overcome, though the cause which he has endeavoured to support be determined against him." I told him that Goldsmith had said to me a few days before, " As I take my shoes from the shoemaker, and my coat from the tailor, so I take my religion from the priest.
Page 83 - Why, sir, that was because he knew the strange colour would attract crowds to gaze at it, and thus they might hear of him, and see how well he could make a coat even of so absurd a colour.
Page 299 - ... paid to Johnson. One evening, in a circle of wits, he found fault with me for talking of Johnson as entitled to the honour of unquestionable superiority.
Page 20 - When asked by another friend, at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, whether he made any reply to this high compliment, he answered, "No, Sir. When the King had said it, it was to be so. It was not for me to bandy civilities with my Sovereign.
Page 93 - But suppose now, Sir, that one of your intimate friends were apprehended for an offence for which he might be hanged." JOHNSON. " I should do what I could to bail him and give him any other assistance ; but if he were once fairly hanged I should not suffer.

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