Boswell's Life of Johnson: Life

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Clarendon Press, 1887
 

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Página 317 - There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.
Página 78 - I happened soon after to attend one of his sermons in the course of which I perceived he intended to finish with a collection, and I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began to soften and concluded to give the coppers.
Página 338 - The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write : a man will turn over half a library to make one book.
Página 3 - The style of Dryden is capricious and varied; that of Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind; Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle.
Página 119 - Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, he said, was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.
Página 360 - It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter,* that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
Página 313 - I wondered to hear him say of " Gulliver's Travels," " When once you have thought of big men and little men, it is very easy to do all the rest.
Página 84 - Shakespeare it is commonly a species. It is from this wide extension of design that so much instruction is derived. It is this which fills the plays of Shakespeare with practical axioms and domestic wisdom. It was said of Euripides that every verse was a precept; and it may be said of Shakespeare that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence.
Página 321 - He attacked Gray, calling him " a dull fellow." BOSWELL : " I understand he was reserved, and might appear dull in company ; but surely he was not dull in poetry." JOHNSON : " Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull every where.' He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him GREAT. He was a mechanical poet.
Página 446 - ... house, as if it were his own. Whereas, at a tavern, there is a general freedom from anxiety. You are sure you are welcome: and the more noise you make, the more trouble you give, the more good things you call for, the welcomer you are. No...

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