If a man is prodigal, he cannot be truly generous.

Melancholy cannot be clearly proved to others, so it is better to be silent about it.

Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.

It is not every man who can be exquisitely miserable, any more than exquisitely happy.

Boswell: But, Sir is it not somewhat singular that you should happen to have Cocker's Arithmetic about you on your journey? Dr. Johnson: Why, Sir if you are to have but one book with you upon a journey, let it be a book of science. When you read through a book of entertainment, you know it, and it can do no more for you; but a book of science is inexhaustible.

When we know exactly all a man's views and how he comes to speak and act so and so, we lose any respect for him, though we may love and admire him.

I argued that the chastity of women was of much more consequence than that of men, as the property and rights of families depend upon it.