Boswell Quotes

He made two or three peculiar observations; as when shewn the botanical garden, 'Is not EVERY garden a botanical garden? ~ James Boswell

We had some port, and drank damnation to the play and eternal remorse to the author. ~ James Boswell

After I went to bed I had a curious fancy as to dreams. In sleep the doors of the mind are shut, and thoughts come jumping in at the windows. They tumble headlong, and therefore are so disorderly and strange. Sometimes they are stout and light on their feet, and then they are rational dreams. ~ James Boswell

Writing is such a solitary thing, so it's nice, when I'm discouraged, to see people still have such faith in fiction. ~ Robert Boswell

His Scotch bear-leader, Mr Boswell, was a butt of the first quality. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

We lived on a farm outside a town of about 900 people. My father was the principal of the elementary school. It was a typical Southern town - there are a lot of churches, and it's dry. ~ Robert Boswell

As the world's sole remaining super power and economic powerhouses, our nation's ability to be at the forefront of innovation and production has enabled unparalleled economic success of our nation's workforce. ~ Leonard Boswell

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. ~ James Boswell

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. ~ James Boswell

A Sceptick therefore, who because he finds that Truths are not universally received, doubts of their existence, is just as foolish as a man who should try large shoes upon little feet, and little shoes upon large feet, and finding that they did not fit. ~ James Boswell

Football is played best full of adrenaline and anger. Moderation seldom finds a place. Almost every act of baseball is a blending of effort and control; too much of either is fatal. ~ Thomas Boswell

Baseball means Spring's Here. Football means Winter's Coming. ~ Thomas Boswell

The heart was a tyrant, like a child demanding ice cream instead of broccoli and throwing a fit to get its way. ~ Robert Boswell

With that he lifted her off him and deposited ~ Ben Boswell

Conversation is the blood of baseball. It flows through the game, an invigorating system of anecdotes. Ballplayers are tale tellers who have polished their malarkey and winnowed their wisdom for years. ~ Thomas Boswell

Quarterbacks have to ask the crowd to quiet down. Pitchers never do. ~ Thomas Boswell

I think that I had better go, Holmes."
"Not a bit, doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

If a man who is born to a fortune cannot make himself easier and freer than those who are not, he gains nothing. ~ James Boswell

My wife, who does not like journalizing, said it was leaving myself embowelled to posterity
a good strong figure. But I think itis rather leaving myself embalmed. It is certainly preserving myself. ~ James Boswell

I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically. ~ James Boswell

An almost inexorable baseball law: A Red Sox ship with a single leak will always find a way to sink No team is worshipped with such a perverse sense of fatality. ~ Thomas Boswell

Boswell and Thompson write, Every night the rooms on the two upper floors of the Castle were filled to overflowing. Holmes reluctantly accommodated a few men as paying guests, but catered primarily to women - preferably young and pretty ones of apparent means, whose homes were distant from Chicago and who had no one close to them who might make inquiry if they did not soon return. Many never went home. Many, indeed, never emerged from the castle, having once entered it ~ Erik Larson

Familiarity, and a few dozen cheap flyballs off the Monster, breed contempt. ~ Thomas Boswell

Just call me the Boswell of the Krull Gang. ~ Richard Laymon

My definition of man is a cooking animal. The beasts have memory, judgement, and the faculties and passions of our minds in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook. ~ James Boswell

Those who would extirpate evil from the world know little of human nature. As well might punch be palatable without souring as existence agreeable without care. ~ James Boswell

Mr. Langton one day asked him [Samuel Johnson] how he had acquired so accurate a knowledge of Latin, in which, I believe, he was exceeded by no man of his time; he said, 'My master whipt me very well. Without that, Sir, I should have done nothing.' He told Mr. Langton, that while Hunter was flogging his boys unmercifully, he used to say, 'And this I do to save you from the gallows.' Johnson, upon all occasions, expressed his approbation of enforcing instruction by means of the rod. 'I would rather (said he) have the rod to be the general terrour to all, to make them learn, than tell a child, if you do thus, or thus, you will be more esteemed than your brothers or sisters. The rod produces an effect which terminates in itself. A child is afraid of being whipped, and gets his task, and there's an end on't; whereas, by exciting emulation and comparisons of superiority, you lay the foundation of lasting mischief; you make brothers and sisters hate each other. ~ James Boswell

My friend Chuck was supposed to help me coach the team. But he told Miss Curdy he had an after-school job. Do you know what his after-school job is? Going home and watching TV. - Steve Boswell ~ R.L. Stine

In every picture there should be shade as well as light. ~ James Boswell

The front door opened as he walked up the steps, and she appeared like a spirit in a black dress. She didn't have on the red sweater. That, at least, was a relief. But the scent of peppermint swirled around her and reached out to him as he got nearer. Damn, she smelled good. She always made him smile and remember things he hadn't thought of in ages- Christmases, hot chocolate with his family, schnapps at lodge bars. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

As every golfer knows, no one ever lost his mind over one shot. It is rather the gradual process of shot after shot watching your score go to tatters - knowing that you have found a different way to bogey each hole. ~ Thomas Boswell

People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids?
A man cannot know himself better than by attending to the feelings of his heart and to his external actions, from which he may with tolerable certainty judge "what manner of person he is." I have therefore determined to keep a daily journal. ~ James Boswell

Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others. Sometimes it does. But the danger is, that while a man grows better pleased with himself, he may be growing less pleasing to others. Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has presented. ~ James Boswell

& besides, I don't
design my smiles to be nets because I'm not fishing ~ Roseanna Boswell

The best place to catch a baseball hit by (Mark) McGwire is definitely not within the confines of the playing field, or sometimes even the ballpark. Other players dial '1' for long distance. McGwire has to ask for an international operator. ~ Thomas Boswell

And those traces of my father-the pain he'd left behind in the people he'd stolen from, the genes I carried that made me just like him-terrified me. ~ Elle Cosimano

Where they differ is in temper. Izzy has no control over hers. When the anger switch flips in her tiny little brain, no one can turn it off. She is focused to a fault, her tantrums often triggered by the fear of her sightless world. Morgan sighs. She is ready to be released. She quiets easily and quickly. She is a gentle giant, not a fighter. She bites only to defend herself. If her intent were to eliminate her assailant, it would happen in one quick snap of her jaw. She cannot understand why this monster was brought into our peaceful home. We were a happy family until Izzy appeared. She is the Anti-Christ. She is pure evil. Our home has become a salient battleground with opponents always vigilant, wary of the other, waiting for the first sign of war. Finally, ~ Barbara Boswell Brunner

Once this person this counselor at school, this LADY, if you know what I mean, told me that if you kept your nose to the grindstone you could be someone in the world, and I thought, Yeah someone with a fucked up nose. ~ Robert Boswell

The connection between authors, printers, and booksellers must be kept up. ~ James Boswell

Nothing truly lasts forever, not even immortals. - Jonathan. ~ Helen Boswell

But what can a man see of a library being one day in it? ~ James Boswell

There is indeed a strange prejudice against Quotation. ~ James Boswell

What a curious creature is man; with what a variety of powers and faculties is he endued; yet how easily is he disturbed and put out of order. ~ James Boswell

What is the hidden influence behind the press, behind all the sub-versive movements going on around us? Are there several Powers at work? Or is there one Power, one invisible group directing all the rest - the circle of the real Initiates? - Nesta Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, London, Boswell, 1924, p. 348 ~ Umberto Eco

Baseball is the religion that worships the obvious and gives thanks that things are exactly as they seem. Instead of celebrating mysteries, baseball rejoices in the absence of mysteries and trusts that, if we watch what is laid before our eyes, down to the last detail, we will cultivate the gift of seeing things as they really are. ~ Thomas Boswell

What was your life anyway but the tiny black spot of what you've done against the infinite white of possibility? ~ Robert Boswell

Vince sneered at me with bloody teeth and dropped the twenties at my feet as security herded him through the crowd. I didn't pick them up. A shoulder bumped against me, and I looked up into Reece's expressionless face as security marched him past.
He didn't even look at me, his words cold enough to burn.
"I hope you're worth it. ~ Elle Cosimano

Fortunately for the historian, the court to which his evidence is submitted has no fixed term; interesting cases can be argued before it indefinitely. The jury can remain out for as long as it takes to gather the requisite data and come to a sound decision... the historian can watch with delight or consternation as the case is tried and retried by others, who may prove his hunches right or wrong." The Kindness of Strangers ~ John Boswell

I never used to watch horror films because I was a nervous type. I believed all the publicity about The Exorcist when it was released - you know, all that nonsense about people fainting in the cinema - and decided it would definitely freak me out. I particularly remember my girlfriend telling me about Suspiria - ironic considering my first ever film work was with Argento - and how scary it was. ~ Simon Boswell

You have to avoid caricature, at the one end of the spectrum, and sentimentality, at the other; which is not to say that such characters shouldn't be funny part of the time, or that their actions shouldn't evoke genuine feeling. ~ Robert Boswell

The National Intelligence Director needs the authority to do the job we are asking him to do. That means power over the intelligence budget. And to be effective, to be allowed to do his or her job, they must have authority over the budget. ~ Leonard Boswell

As a former English major, I am a sitting duck for Gift Books, and in the past few years I've gotten Dickens, Thackeray, Smollet, Richardson, Emerson, Keats, Boswell and the Brontes, all of them Great, none of them ever read by me, all of them now on a shelf, looking at me and making me feel guilty. ~ Garrison Keillor

It is clear we can make reforms to better ensure we are giving law enforcement all of the tools they need while maintaining the appropriate safeguards to protect the very freedoms we cherish. ~ Leonard Boswell

Our success in this matter is important to all Americans. Whether you are in the forest land business or just enjoy the shade of a majestic oak gracing your lawn, we all have an interest in this important issue. ~ Leonard Boswell

Boswell, like Lecky (to get back to the point of this footnote), and Gibbon before him, loved footnotes. They knew that the outer surface of truth is not smooth, welling and gathering from paragraph to shapely paragraph, but is encrusted with a rough protective bark of citations, quotations marks, italics, and foreign languages, a whole variorum crust of "ibid.'s" and "compare's" and "see's" that are the shield for the pure flow of argument as it lives for a moment in one mind. They knew the anticipatory pleasure of sensing with peripheral vision, as they turned the page, gray silt of further example and qualification waiting in tiny type at the bottom. (They were aware, more generally, of the usefulness of tiny type in enhancing the glee of reading works of obscure scholarship: typographical density forces you to crouch like Robert Hooke or Henry Gray over the busyness and intricacy of recorded truth.) They liked deciding as they read whether they would bother to consult a certain footnote or not, and whether they would read it in context, or read it before the text it hung from, as an hors d'oeuvre. The muscles of the eye, they knew, want vertical itineraries; the rectus externus and internus grow dazed waggling back and forth in the Zs taught in grade school: the footnote functions as a switch, offering the model-railroader's satisfaction of catching the march of thought with a superscripted "1" and routing it, sometimes at length, through abandoned stations and submerged, ~ Nicholson Baker

To me it's awe-inspiring ... All those billions of little evolutionary steps leading to this sensation of being "me." ~ Simon Boswell

Baseball is not necessarily an obsessive-compulsive disorder, like washing your hands 100 times a day, but it's beginning to seem that way. We're reaching the point where you can be a truly dedicated, state-of-the-art fan or you can have a life. Take your pick. ~ Thomas Boswell

Dr. Calder [a Unitarian minister] said of Dr. [Samuel] Johnson on the publications of Boswell and Mrs. Piozzi, that he was like Actaeon, torn to pieces by his own pack. ~ Horace Walpole

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, I refute it thus. ~ James Boswell

I like your mom," Adam said as they watched her walk away.
"She's a saint."
"Jake," his father called.
"And that's the reason why," Jake murmured. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

[A]s a lady adjusts her dress before a mirror, a man adjusts his character by looking at his journal. ~ James Boswell

[B]aseball is diffracted by the town and ballpark where it is played ... Does baseball, like a liquid, take the shape of its container? ~ Thomas Boswell

The difference between greatness and mediocrity is often how an individual views a mistake. ~ Nelson Boswell

Overt intelligent performances are not clues to the workings of minds; they are those workings. Boswell described Johnson's mind when he described how he wrote, talked, ate, fidgeted and fumed. His description was, of course, incomplete, since there were notoriously some thoughts which Johnson kept carefully to himself and there must have been many dreams, daydreams and silent babblings which only Johnson could have recorded and only a James Joyce would wish him to have recorded. ~ Gilbert Ryle

I have discovered that we may be in some degree whatever character we choose. Besides, practice forms a man to anything. ~ James Boswell

To abolish a status, which in all ages God has sanctioned, and man has continued, would not only be robbery to an innumerable class of our fellow-subjects; but it would be extreme cruelty to the African Savages, a portion of whom it saves from massacre, or intolerable bondage in their own country, and introduces into a much happier state of life; especially now when their passage to the West-Indies and their treatment there is humanely regulated. ~ James Boswell

The 9/11 Commission strongly recommends that the National Intelligence Director be fully in control of the budget, from developing it to implementing it, to ensuring that the National Intelligence Director has the clout to make decisions. ~ Leonard Boswell

A major golf tournament is 40,000 sadists watching 144 masochists. ~ Thomas Boswell

Every man has a day in his life when nobody can defeat him. ~ Robert Boswell

In every place, where there is any thing worthy of observation, there should be a short printed directory for strangers. ~ James Boswell

Of the big four, the PGA is the most fair and the least fun. Basically, it's just the US Open set up by nice, rather than nasty, fellows. ~ Thomas Boswell

We must ensure that every worker has healthcare and is able to save for their retirement. We must ensure that our workers have safe and health working conditions. ~ Leonard Boswell

What we must try to be, of course, is ourselves and wholeheartedly. We must find out what we really are and what we really want. ~ Nelson Boswell

I guess if life were fair, people who led decent lives would be rewarded, and people who led indecent lives would not be rewarded. ~ Robert Boswell

I am now to offer some thoughts upon that sameness or familiarity which we frequently find between passages in different authors without quotation. This may be one of three things either what is called Plagiarism, or Imitation, or Coincidence. ~ James Boswell

The naked pinch hitter takes only one thing to the plate: his raw, and somewhat irrational, confidence in himself. That this confidence is so unreasonable adds to its dignity. ~ Thomas Boswell

My curiosity to see the melancholy spectacle of the executions was so strong that I could not resist it, although I was sensible that I would suffer much from it ... I got upon a scaffold near the fatal tree so that I could clearly see all the dismal scene ... I was most terribly shocked, and thrown into a very deep melancholy. ~ James Boswell

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

A page of my journal is like a cake of portable soup. A little may be diffused into a considerable portion. ~ James Boswell

A companion loves some agreeable qualities which a man may possess, but a friend loves the man himself. ~ James Boswell

I think there is a blossom about me of something more distinguished than the generality of mankind. ~ James Boswell

Blessed is he who has learned to laugh at himself for he shall never cease to be entertained. ~ John Boswell

At night I strolled into the Park and took the first whore I met, whom I without many words copulated with free from danger, being safely sheathed. She was ugly and lean and her breath smelt of spirits. I never asked her name. When it was done, she slunk off. I had a low opinion of this practice and resolved to do it no more. ~ James Boswell

The American Dream is one of success, home ownership, college education for one's children, and have a secure job to provide these and other goals. ~ Leonard Boswell

I may be the only golfer never to have broken a single putter, if you don't count the one I twisted into a loop and threw into a bush. ~ Thomas Boswell

The rain began to fall harder, and it distracted him, but he tried to pull himself back because he felt on the verge of understanding something large and important. It seemed to him that this moment - the light and wind, the sweep of fields, the falling rain, the lowing cows, Leah's form as it twisted to one side and then another - captured a sort of life that he longed for, a life of order and harsh beauty, and although this was his farm and his vision, it did not seem to be his life. It seemed instead to be the thing for which he must daily give up his life, an act of submission to something he could not name and only rarely, in moments such as these, have a sense of. Life during these moments seemed neither lost nor ruined but a power to be shared, as the grass shares its power with the living things that devour it. ~ Robert Boswell

What an insignificant life is this which I am now leading! ~ James Boswell

people to ourselves rather than Jesus, and then wonder why power has left the pulpit and why the deep theological treasures of some of the old hymns have degenerated into songs that exalt us above the glory of our Creator. Despite our pretensions, our pride grows ~ Matt Boswell

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. ~ James Boswell

Iowa is home to teachers, farmers, lawyers, factory workers, and many others who work hard every day to provide the best for their families and their future. ~ Leonard Boswell

Influence must ever be in proportion to property; and it is right it should. ~ James Boswell

Friendship, "the wine of life," should, like a well-stocked cellar, be continually renewed; and it is consolatory to think, that although we can seldom add what will equal the generous first growths of our youth, yet friendship becomes insensibly old in much less time than is commonly imagined, and not many years are required to make it mellow and pleasant. ~ James Boswell

His fame is great; and it will, we have no doubt, be lasting; but it is fame of a peculiar kind, and indeed marvellously resembles infamy. We remember no other case in which the world has made so great a distinction between a book and its author. In general, the book and the author are considered as one. To admire the book is to admire the author. The case of Boswell is an exception, we think the only exception, to this rule. ~ Samuel Johnson

As all who come into the country must obey the King, so all who come into an university must be of the Church. ~ James Boswell

I am so fond of tea that I could write a whole dissertation on its virtues. It comforts and enlivens without the risks attendant on spirituous liquors. Gentle herb! Let the florid grape yield to thee. Thy soft influence is a more safe inspirer of social joy. ~ James Boswell

Some things cannont possibly happen, because they are both too improbable and too perfect. The U.S. hockey team cannot beat the Russians in the 1980 Olympics. Jack Nicklaus cannot shoot 65 to win the Masters at age forty-six. Nothing else comes immediately to mind. ~ Thomas Boswell

I keep collecting books I know
I'll never, never read;
My wife and daughter tell me so,
And yet I never heed.
"Please make me," says some wistful tome,
"A wee bit of yourself."
And so I take my treasure home,
And tuck it in a shelf.

And now my very shelves complain;
They jam and over-spill.
They say: "Why don't you ease our strain?"
"Some day," I say, "I will."
So book by book they plead and sigh;
I pick and dip and scan;
Then put them back, distressed that I
Am such a busy man.

Now, there's my Boswell and my Sterne,
my Gibbon and Defoe;
To savor Swift I'll never learn,
Montaigne I may not know.
On Bacon I will never sup,
For Shakespeare I've no time;
Because I'm busy making up
These jingly bits of rhyme.

Chekov is caviar to me,
While Stendhal makes me snore;
Poor Proust is not my cup of tea,
And Balzac is a bore.
I have their books, I love their names,
And yet alas! they head,
With Lawrence, Joyce and Henry James,
My Roster of Unread.

I think it would be very well
If I commit a crime,
And get put in a prison cell
And not allowed to rhyme;
Yet given all these worthy books
According to my need,
I now caress with loving looks,
But never, never read."

(from, Book Lover) ~ Robert W. Service

What most people want to keep under wraps (from reporters) is trivial: petty jealousies, professional feuds, etc. By contrast, most of the things they have thought about most seriously all their lives they are perfectly winning to uncover. ~ Thomas Boswell

Her physical beauty had initially caught my attention, but it was her spirit that imprisoned my heart and soul forever. - Jonathan ~ Helen Boswell

There is no indication that any church official suggested or supported the emperor's action against gay people. On the contrary, the only persons known by name to have been punished for homosexual acts were prominent bishops. ~ John Boswell