James Boswell

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

— James Boswell

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over. So in a series of kindness there is, at last, one which makes the heart run over.

— James Boswell

I find I journalize too tediously. Let me try to abbreviate.

— James Boswell

There is nothing worth the wear of winning, but laughter and the love of friends.

— James Boswell

For my own part I think no innocent species of wit or pleasantry should be suppressed: and that a good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation.

— James Boswell

I happened to start a question of propriety, whether, when a man knows that some of his intimate friends are invited to the house of another friend, with whom they are all equally intimate, he may join them without an invitation. JOHNSON. "No, Sir; he is not to go when he is not invited. They may be invited on purpose to abuse him" (smiling).

— James Boswell

Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.

— James Boswell

Although he probably was not oftener in the wrong than she was, in the little disagreements which sometimes troubled his married state, during which, he owned to me, that the gloomy irritability of his existence was more painful to him than ever, he might very naturally, after her death, be tenderly disposed to charge himself with slight omissions and offences, the sense of which would give him much uneasiness.

— James Boswell