103 Quotes by James Boswell

In an orchard there should be enough to eat, enough to lay up, enough to be stolen, and enough to rot on the ground.

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

We must take our friends as they are.

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."

My definition of Man is, a Cooking Animal. The beasts have memory, judgement, and all the faculties and passions of our mind, in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook....Man alone can dress a good dish; and every man whatever is more or less a cook, in seasoning what he himself eats.

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

O charitable philosopher, I beg you to help me. My mind is weak but my soul is strong. Kindle that soul, and the sacred fire shall never be extinguished.

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

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