There are 68 comments.

1. Contributor
   Titus Techera

   @TitusTechera

   6:52 AM EST ⋅ Dec 7, 2015

   Ross C:Two funny attributions.

   “No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.”

   In his definition of oats:

   ‘a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.’

   Delightfully chauvinistic.

   Right, too.

   Remember the old line about management in the navy: Rum, sodomy, & the lash. Guess which was the royal part?

   One of the terrible things of modern times is that civilized men drink spirits. Makes the heart harden…

2. Inactive
   Mike Hubbard

   @MikeHubbard

   7:40 AM EST ⋅ Dec 7, 2015

   Ross C: In his definition of oats: ‘a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.’ Delightfully chauvinistic.

   You left off Boswell’s rejoinder: “Aye, and that’s why England has such fine horses, and Scotland such fine people.”

3. Inactive
   Ross C

   @RossC

   7:57 AM EST ⋅ Dec 7, 2015

   Mike Hubbard:

   You left off Boswell’s rejoinder: “

   Funny I have never heard that, but the great part IMHO is that this was not an off the cuff remark but was rather the definition in the dictionary.  That is what separates Johnson from somebody like Oscar Wilde.

4. Coolidge
   John Russell

   @JohnRussell

   

   7:59 AM EST ⋅ Dec 7, 2015

   Manfred Arcane:

   John Russell:I can’t resist one more from Lives of the Poets:

   If by a more noble and more adequate conception, that be considered as wit which is at once natural and new, that which, though not obvious, is, upon its first production, acknowledged to be just; if it be that which he that never found it, wonders how he missed; to wit of this kind the metaphysical poets have seldom risen. Their thoughts are often new, but seldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they just; and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more frequently by what perverseness of industry they were ever found.

   So, me thinks your ‘recovery’ is not going too well. A little bit of back sliding here (from Ricochet bio: “Recovering Intellectual. Emeritus Professor of Aerospace Engineering…) :)

   Quite right.

5. Coolidge
   Autistic License

   @AutisticLicense

   9:33 AM EST ⋅ Dec 7, 2015

   John Russell:My second nomination is from The Adventurer, No, 85, August 28, 1753, “The Role of the Scholar”:

   An opinion has of late been, I know not how, propagated among us, that libraries are filled only with useless lumber; that men of parts stand in need of no assistance; and that to spend life in poring upon books is only to imbibe prejudices, to obstruct and embarrass the powers of nature, to cultivate memory at the expense of judgement, and to bury reason under a chaos of indigested learning.

   Such is the talk of many who think themselves wise, and of some who are thought wise by others; of whom part probably believe their own tenets, and part may be justly suspected of endeavouring to shelter their ignorance in multitudes, and of wishing to destroy that reputation· which they have no hopes to share. It will, I believe, be found invariably true-that-learning was never decried by .any learned man; and what credit can be given to those who venture to condemn that which they do not know?

   Johnson predicts Mizzou!

6. Coolidge
   John Russell

   @JohnRussell

   

   10:53 AM EST ⋅ Dec 7, 2015

   In re Autistic License, “Johnson predicts Mizzou!”

   Good point.  See also

   Ecclesiastes 1:9
   King James Version (KJV)
   9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

7. Member
   Blue State Blues

   @BlueStateBlues

   

   11:11 AM EST ⋅ Dec 8, 2015

   I was in the right place, but it mussa bin the wrong time…

8. Member
   Arahant

   @Arahant

   9:46 AM EDT ⋅ Jul 20, 2016

   Claire Berlinski, Ed.:

   Percival:Read your own compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

   “What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.”

   (We should get rid of Claire Berlinski’s 11 tips and replace them with Dr. Johnson’s, shouldn’t we.)

   Looks as if we have done one without the other.