Complete Works of Samuel Johnson, page 893
BOOKSELLER. ‘An author generated by the corruption of a bookseller,’ iii. 434.
BORN. ‘I know that he was born; no matter where,’ v. 399.
BOTANIST. ‘Should I wish to become a botanist, I must first turn myself into a reptile,’ i. 377, n. 2.
BOTTOM. ‘A bottom of good sense,’ iv. 99.
BOUNCING. ‘It is the mere bouncing of a school-boy,’ ii. 210.
BOUND. ‘Not in a bound book,’ iii. 319, n. 1.
BOW-WOW. ‘Dr. Johnson’s sayings would not appear so extraordinary were it not for his bow-wow way’ (Lord Pembroke), ii. 326, n. 5.
BRAINS. ‘I am afraid there is more blood than brains,’ iv. 20.
BRANDY. ‘He who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy,’ iii. 381; ‘Brandy will do soonest for a man what drinking can do for him,’ iii. 381.
BRASED. ‘He advanced with his front already brased,’ v. 388, n. 2.
BRAVERY. ‘Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing,’ iv. 395.
BRENTFORD. ‘Pray, Sir, have you ever seen Brentford?’ iv. 186.
BRIARS. ‘I was born in the wilds of Christianity, and the briars and thorns still hang about me’ (Marshall), iii. 313.
BRIBED. ‘You may be bribed by flattery,’ v. 306.
BRINK. ‘Dryden delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning,’ ii. 241, n. 1.
BROTHEL. ‘This lady of yours, Sir, I think, is very fit for a brothel,’ iii. 25.
BRUTALITY. ‘Abating his brutality he was a very good master,’ ii. 146.
BUCKRAM’D. ‘It may have been written by Walpole and buckram’d by Mason’ (T. Warton), iv. 315.
BULL. ‘If a bull could speak, he might as well exclaim, “Here am I with this cow and this grass; what being can enjoy greater felicity?”’ ii. 228.
BULL’S HIDE. ‘This sum will…get you a strong lasting coat supposing it to be made of good bull’s hide,’ i. 440.
BURDEN. ‘Poverty preserves him from sinking under the burden of himself,’ v. 358, n. 1.
BURROW. ‘The chief advantage of London is that a man is always so near his burrow’ (Meynell), iii. 379.
BURSTS. ‘He has no bursts of admiration on trivial occasions,’ iv. 27
BUSINESS. ‘It is prodigious the quantity of good that may be done by one man, if he will make a business of it’ (Franklin), iv. 97 n. 3.
Buz. ‘That is the buz of the theatre,’ v. 46.
C.
CABBAGE. ‘Such a woman might be cut out of a cabbage, if there was a skilful artificer,’ v. 231.
CALCULATE. ‘Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim; and when you are calculating, calculate,’ iii. 49.
CANDLES. ‘A man who has candles may sit up too late,’ ii. 188.
CANNISTER. ‘An author hunted with a cannister at his tail,’ iii. 320.
CANT. ‘Clear your mind of cant,’ iv. 221;
’Don’t cant in defence of savages,’ iv. 308;
’Vulgar cant against the manners of the great,’ iii. 353.
CANTING. ‘A man who has been canting all his life may cant to the last,’ iii. 270.
CAPITULATE. ‘I will be conquered, I will not capitulate,’ iv. 374.
CARD-PLAYING. ‘Why, Sir, as to the good or evil of card-playing,’
iii. 23;
’It generates kindness and consolidates society,’ v. 404.
CARROT. ‘You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot,’ ii. 439.
CAT. ‘She was a speaking cat,’ iii. 246.
CATCH. ‘God will not take a catch of him,’ iv. 225.
CATCHING. ‘That man spent his life in catching at an object which he had not power to grasp,’ ii. 129.
CATEGORICAL. ‘I could never persuade her to be categorical,’ iii. 461.
CAUTION. ‘A strain of cowardly caution,’ iii. 210.
CAWMELL. ‘Ay, ay, he has learnt this of Cawmell,’ i. 418.
CENSURE. ‘All censure of a man’s self is oblique praise,’ iii. 323.
CHAIR. ‘He fills a chair,’ iv. 81.
CHARACTER. ‘Ranger is just a rake, a mere rake, and a lively young fellow, but no character ii. 50; ‘Derrick may do very well as long as he can outrun his character, but the moment his character gets up with him, it is all over,’ i. 394; ‘The greater part of mankind have no character at all,’ iii. 280, n. 3.
CHARITY. ‘There is as much charity in helping a man down-hill as in helping him up-hill,’ v. 243.
CHEERFULNESS. ‘Cheerfulness was always breaking in’ (Edwards), iii. 305.
CHEQUERED. ‘Thus life is chequered,’ iv. 245, n. 2.
CHERRY-STONES. ‘A genius that could not carve heads upon cherry-stones,’ iv. 305.
CHIEF. ‘He has no more the soul of a chief than an attorney who has twenty houses in a street, and considers how much he can make by them,’ v. 378.
CHILDISH. ‘One may write things to a child without being childish’
(Swift), ii. 408, n. 3.
CHIMNEY. ‘To endeavour to make her ridiculous is like blacking the chimney,’ ii. 336.
CHUCK-FARTHING. ‘A judge is not to play at marbles or at chuck-farthing in the Piazza,’ ii. 344.
CHURCH. ‘He never passes a church without pulling off his hat,’ i. 418;
‘Let me see what was once a church,’ v. 41.
CITIZEN. ‘The citizen’s enlarged dinner, two pieces of roast-beef and two puddings,’ iii. 272.
CIVIL. ‘He was so generally civil that nobody thanked him for it,’ iii. 183
CIVILITY. ‘We have done with civility,’ iii. 273.
CLAIMS. ‘He fills weak heads with imaginary claims,’ ii. 244.
CLAPPED. ‘He could not conceive a more humiliating situation than to be clapped on the back by Tom Davies’ (Beauclerk), ii. 344.
CLARET. ‘A man would be drowned by claret before it made him drunk,’
iii. 381; iv. 79;
‘Claret is the liquor for boys,’ iii. 381.
CLEAN. ‘He did not love clean linen; and I have no passion for it,’ i. 397.
CLEANEST. ‘He was the cleanest-headed man that he had met with,’ v. 338.
CLERGYMAN. ‘A clergyman’s diligence always makes him venerable,’ iii. 438.
CLIPPERS. ‘There are clippers abroad,’ iii. 49.
COAT. ‘A man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one,’ iii. 188, n. 4.
COCK. ‘A fighting cock has a nobleness of resolution,’ ii. 334.
COCK-FIGHTING. ‘Cock-fighting will raise the spirits of a company,’ iii. 42.
COMBINATION. ‘There is a combination in it of which Macaulay is not capable,’ v. 119.
COMEDY. ‘I beg pardon, I thought it was a comedy’ (Shelburne),
iv. 246, n. 5;
’The great end of comedy is to make an audience merry,’ ii. 233.
COMMON — PLACES. ‘Criticism disdains to chase a school-boy to his common-places,’ iv. 16, n. 4.
COMPANY. ‘A fellow comes into our company who is fit for no
company,’ v. 312;
’The servants seem as unfit to attend a company as to steer a
man of war,’ iv. 312.
COMPARATIVE. ‘All barrenness is comparative,’ iii. 76.
COMPLETES. ‘He never completes what he has to say,’ iii. 57.
CONCENTRATED. ‘It is being concentrated which produces high convenience,’ v. 27.
CONCENTRATES. ‘Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight it concentrates his mind wonderfully,’ iii. 167.
CONCLUSIVE. ‘There is nothing conclusive in his talk,’ iii. 57.
CONE. ‘A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone,’ iii. 283.
CONGRESS. ‘If I had bestowed such an education on a daughter, and had discovered that she thought of marrying such a fellow, I would have sent her to the Congress,’ ii. 409.
CONSCIENCE. ‘No man’s conscience can tell him the right of another man,’ ii. 243.
CONTEMPT. ‘No man loves to be treated with contempt,’ iii. 385.
CONTEMPTIBLE. ‘There is no being so poor and so contemptible who does not think there is somebody still poorer, and still more contemptible,’ ii. 13.
CONTRADICTED. ‘What harm does it do to any man to be contradicted?’ iv. 280.
CONVERSATION. ‘In conversation you never get a system,’ ii. 361;
’We had talk enough, but no conversation,’ iv. 186.
COUNT. ‘He had to count ten, and he has counted it right,’ ii. 65; ‘When the judgment is so disturbed that a man cannot count, that is pretty well,’ iv. 176.
COUNTING. ‘A man is often as narrow as he is prodigal for want of counting,’ iv. 4, n. 4.
COUNTRY. ‘They who are content to live in the country are fit for the country,’ iv. 338.
Cow. ‘A cow is a very good animal in the field but we turn her out of
a garden,’ ii. 187;
’My dear Sir, I would confine myself to the cow’ (Blair), v. 396, n. 4;
’Nay, Sir, if you cannot talk better as a man, I’d have you bellow
like a cow,’ v. 396.
COWARDICE. ‘Mutual cowardice keeps us in peace,’ iii. 326;
’Such is the cowardice of a commercial place,’ iii. 429.
COXCOMB. ‘He is a coxcomb, but a satisfactory coxcomb’(Hamilton),
iii. 245, n. i;
’Once a coxcomb and always a coxcomb,’ ii. 129.
CRAZY. ‘Sir, there is no trusting to that crazy piety,’ ii. 473.
Crédulité. ‘La Crédulité des incrédules’ (Lord Hailes), v. 332.
CRITICISM. ‘Blown about by every wind of criticism,’ iv. 319.
CROSS-LEGGED. ‘A tailor sits crosslegged, but that is not luxury,’ ii. 218
CRUET. ‘A mind as narrow as the neck of a vinegar cruet,’ v. 269.
Cui bono. ‘I hate a cui bono man’ (Dr. Shaw), iv. 112.
CURE. ‘Stay till I am well, and then you shall tell me how to cure myself,’ ii. 260.
CURIOSITY. ‘There are two objects of curiosity-the Christian world and the Mahometan world,’ iv. 199.
D.
DANCING-MASTER. ‘They teach the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing-master,’ i. 266.
DARING. ‘These fellows want to say a daring thing, and don’t know how to go about it,’ iii. 347.
DARKNESS. ‘I was unwilling that he should leave the world in total darkness, and sent him a set’ [of the Ramblers], iv. 90.
DASH. ‘Why don’t you dash away like Burney?’ ii. 409.
DEATH. ‘If one was to think constantly of death, the business of
life would stand still,’ v. 316;
’The whole of life is but keeping away the thoughts of death,’ ii. 93;
’We are getting out of a state of death,’ ii. 461;
’Who can run the race with death?’ iv. 360.
DEBATE. ‘When I was a boy I used always to choose the wrong side of a debate,’ i. 441.
DEBAUCH. ‘I would not debauch her mind,’ iv. 398, n. 2.
DEBAUCHED. ‘Every human being whose mind is not debauched will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge,’ i. 458.
DECLAIM. ‘Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim; and when you are calculating, calculate,’ iii. 49.
DECLAMATION. ‘Declamation roars and passion sleeps’ (Garrick), i. 199, n. 2.
DEFENSIVE. ‘Mine was defensive pride,’ i. 265.
DESCRIPTION. ‘Description only excites curiosity; seeing satisfies it,’ iv. 199.
Desidiae. ‘Desidiae valedixi,’ i. 74.
DESPERATE. ‘The desperate remedy of desperate distress,’ i. 308, n. 1.
DEVIL. ‘Let him go to some place where he is not known; don’t let him go to the devil where he is known,’ v. 54.
DIE. ‘I am not to lie down and die between them,’ v. 47; ‘It is a sad thing for a man to lie down and die,’ iii. 317; ‘To die with lingering anguish is generally man’s folly,’ iv. 150, n. 2.
DIES. ‘It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives,’ ii. 106.
Dieu. ‘Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer’ (Voltaire), v. 47, n. 4.
DIFFERING. ‘Differing from a man in doctrine was no reason why you should pull his house about his ears,’ v. 62.
DIGNITY. ‘He that encroaches on another’s dignity puts himself in his
power,’ iv. 62;
’The dignity of danger,’ iii. 266.
DINNER. ‘A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything
than he does of his dinner,’ i. 467, n. 2;
’Amidst all these sorrowful scenes I have no objection to dinner,’
v. 63;
’Dinner here is a thing to be first planned and then executed,’
v. 305;
’This was a good enough dinner, to be sure; but it was not a
dinner to ask a man to,’ i. 470.
DIP. ‘He had not far to dip,’ iii. 35.
DIRT. ‘By those who look close to the ground dirt will be seen,’ ii. 82, n. 3.
DISAPPOINTED. ‘He had never been disappointed by anybody but himself,’ i. 337, n. 1.
DISCOURAGE. Don’t let us discourage one another,’ iii. 303.
DISLIKE. ‘Nothing is more common than mutual dislike where mutual approbation is particularly expected,’ iii. 423.
DISPUTE. ‘I will dispute very calmly upon the probability of another man’s son being hanged,’ iii. 11.
DISSENTER. ‘Sir, my neighbour is a Dissenter’ (Sir R. Chambers), ii. 268, n. 2.
DISTANCE. ‘Sir, it is surprising how people will go to a distance for what they may have at home,’ v. 286.
DISTANT. ‘All distant power is bad,’ iv. 213.
DISTINCTIONS. ‘All distinctions are trifles,’ iii. 355.
DISTRESS. ‘People in distress never think that you feel enough,’ ii. 469.
DOCKER. ‘I hate a Docker,’ i. 379, n. 2.
DOCTOR. ‘There goes the Doctor,’ ii. 372.
DOCTRINE. ‘His doctrine is the best limited,’ iii. 338.
DOG. ‘Ah, ah! Sam Johnson! I see thee! — and an ugly dog thou art,’
ii. 141, n. 2;
’Does the dog talk of me?’ ii. 53;
’He, the little black dog,’ i. 284;
’He’s a Whig, Sir; a sad dog,’ iii. 274;
’What he did for me he would have done for a dog,’ iii. 195;
’I have hurt the dog too much already,’ i. 260, n. 3;
’I hope they did not put the dog in the pillory,’ iii. 354;
’I love the young dogs of this age,’ i. 445;
’I took care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it,’
i. 504;
’I would have knocked the factious dogs on the head,’ iv. 221;
’If you were not an idle dog, you might write it,’ iii. 162;
’It is the old dog in a new doublet,’ iii. 329;
’Presto, you are, if possible, a more lazy dog than I am,’
iv. 347, n. 1;
’Some dogs dance better than others,’ ii. 404;
’The dogs don’t know how to write trifles with dignity,’ iv. 34, n. 5;
’The dogs are not so good scholars,’ i. 445;
’The dog is a Scotchman,’ iv. 98;
’The dog is a Whig,’ v. 255;
’The dog was so very comical,’ iii. 69;
’What, is it you, you dogs?’ i. 250.
DOGGED. ‘Dogged veracity,’ iii. 378.
DOGGEDLY. ‘A man may write at any time if he will set himself doggedly to it,’ i. 203; v. 40, 110.
DOGMATISE. ‘I dogmatise and am contradicted,’ ii. 452, n. 1.
DONE. ‘What a man has done compared with what he might have
done,’ ii. 129;
’What must be done, Sir, will be done,’ i. 202.
DOUBLE. ‘It is not every name that can carry double,’ v. 295;
’Let us live double,’ iv. 108.
DOUBTS. ‘His doubts are better than most people’s certainties’ (Lord
Chancellor Hardwicke), iii. 205.
DRAW. ‘Madam, I have but ninepence in ready money, but I can draw for a thousand pounds’ (Addison), ii. 256.
DRIFT. ‘What is your drift, Sir?’ iv. 281.
DRIVE. ‘I do not now drive the world about; the world drives or draws me,’ iv. 273, n. 1; ‘If your company does not drive a man out of his house, nothing will,’ iii. 315; ‘Ten thousand Londoners would drive all the people of Pekin,’ v. 305.
DRIVING. ‘You are driving rapidly from something, or to something,’ iii. 5.
DROPPED. ‘There are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by,’ iv. 73.
DROVES. ‘Droves of them would come up, and attest anything for the honour of Scotland,’ ii. 311.
DROWNED. ‘Being in a ship is being in a jail with the chance of being drowned,’ v. 137.
DRUNK. ‘Never but when he is drunk,’ ii. 351;
’Equably drunk,’ iii. 389;
’People who died of dropsies, which they contracted in trying to
get drunk,’ v. 249;
’A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated has not the art of
getting drunk,’ iii. 389.
DUCKING-STOOL. ‘A ducking-stool for women,’ iii. 287.
DULL. ‘He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dulness in others’
(Foote), iv. 178;
’He was dull in a new way,’ ii. 327.
DUNCE. ‘It was worth while being a dunce then,’ ii. 84;
’Why that is because, dearest, you’re a dunce,’ iv. 109.
E.
EARNEST. ‘At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest,’ v. 288, n. 3.
EASIER. ‘It is easier to write that book than to read it’ (Goldsmith),
ii. 90;
’It is much easier to say what it is not,’ iii. 38.
EAST. ‘The man who has vigour may walk to the east just as well as to the west, if he happens to turn his head that way,’ v. 35.
ECONOMY. ‘The blundering economy of a narrow understanding,’ iii. 300.
Emptoris sit eligere, i. 155.
EMPTY-HEADED. ‘She does not gain upon me, Sir; I think her emptyheaded,’ iii. 48.
