Dr Johnson said, the inscription should have been in Latin, as every thing intended to be universal and permanent, should be.

My mind was, as it were, strongly impregnated with the Johnsonian ether.

I, who have no sisters or brothers, look with some degree of innocent envy on those who may be said to be born to friends.

He had no settled plan of life, nor looked forward at all, but merely lived from day to day. Yet he read a great deal in a desultory manner, without any scheme of study, as chance threw books in his way, and inclination directed him through them.

In comparing these two writers, he [Samuel Johnson] used this expression: "that there was as great a difference between them as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate." This was a short and a figurative statement of his distinction between drawing characters of nature and characters only of manners, but I cannot help being of opinion, that the neat watches of Fielding are as well constructed as the large clocks of Richardson, and that his dial plates are brighter.

Friendship, "the wine of life," should, like a well-stocked cellar, be continually renewed.

There is indeed a strange prejudice against Quotation.