Complete Works of Samuel Johnson, page 895
K.
KEEP. ‘You have Lord Kames, keep him,’ ii. 53.
KINDNESS. ‘Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness,’
iv. 115;
’To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of
life,’ iii. 182.
KNEW. ‘George the First knew nothing and desired to know nothing; did nothing, and desired to do nothing,’ ii. 342.
KNOCKED. ‘He should write so as he may live by them, not so as he may be knocked on the head,’ ii. 221.
KNOWING. ‘It is a pity he is not knowing,’ ii. 196.
KNOWLEDGE. ‘A desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind,’
i. 458;
’A man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home
knowledge,’ iii. 302.
L.
LABOUR. ‘It appears to me that I labour when I say a good thing,’
iii. 260; v. 77;
’No man loves labour for itself,’ ii. 99.
LACE. ‘Let us not be found, when our Master calls us, ripping the lace off our waistcoats, but the spirit of contention from our souls and tongues,’ iii. 188, n. 4.
LACED COAT. ‘One loves a plain coat, another loves a laced coat,’ ii. 192.
LACED WAISTCOAT. If everybody had laced waistcoats we should have people working in laced waistcoats,’ ii. 188.
Laetus. ‘Aliis laetus, sapiens sibi,’ iii. 405.
LANGUAGES. ‘Languages are the pedigree of nations,’ v. 225.
LATIN. ‘He finds out the Latin by the meaning, rather than the meaning by the Latin,’ ii. 377.
LAWYERS. ‘A bookish man should always have lawyers to converse with,’ iii. 306.
LAY. ‘Lay your knife and your fork across your plate,’ ii. 51.
LAY OUT. ‘Sir, you cannot give me an instance of any man who is permitted to lay out his own time contriving not to have tedious hours,’ ii. 194.
LEAN. ‘Every heart must lean to somebody,’ i. 515.
LEARNING. ‘He had no more learning than what he could not help,’
iii. 386;
’I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning,’ iii. 385;
’I never frighten young people with difficulties [as to learning],’
v. 316;
’Their learning is like bread in a besieged town; every man gets
a little, but no man gets a full meal,’ ii. 363.
LEGS. ‘Sir, it is no matter what you teach them first, any more than
what leg you shall put into your breeches first,’ i. 452;
’A man who loves to fold his legs and have out his talk,’ iii. 230;
’His two legs brought him to that,’ v. 397.
LEISURE. ‘If you are sick, you are sick of leisure,’ iv. 352.
LEVELLERS. ‘Your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves,’ i. 448.
LEXICOGRAPHER. ‘These were the dreams of a poet doomed at last to wake a lexicographer,’ v. 47, n. 2.
LIAR. ‘The greatest liar tells more truth than falsehood,’ iii. 236.
LIBEL. ‘Boswell’s Life of Johnson is a new kind of libel’
(Dr. Blagden), iv. 30, n. 2.
Liber. ‘Liber ut esse velim,’ &c., i. 83, n. 3.
LIBERTY. ‘All boys love liberty,’ iii. 383;
’I am at liberty to walk into the Thames,’ iii. 287;
’Liberty is as ridiculous in his mouth as religion in mine’ (Wilkes),
iii. 224;
’No man was at liberty not to have candles in his windows,’ iii. 383;
’People confound liberty of thinking with liberty of talking,’ ii. 249.
LIBRARIES, ‘A robust genius born to grapple with whole libraries’
(Dr. Boswell), iii. 7.
LIE. ‘Do the devils lie? No; for then Hell could not subsist’
(attributed to Sir Thomas Browne), iii. 293;
’He carries out one lie; we know not how many he brings
back,’ iv. 320;
’If I accustom a servant to tell a lie for me, have I not reason
to apprehend that he will tell many lies for himself?’ i. 436;
’Sir, If you don’t lie, you are a rascal’ (Colman), iv. 10;
’It is only a wandering lie,’ iv. 49, n. 3;
’It requires no extraordinary talents to lie and deceive,’ v. 217;
’Never lie in your prayers’ (Jeremy Taylor), iv. 295.
LIED. ‘Why, Sir, I do not know that Campbell ever lied with pen and ink,’ iii. 244.
LIES. ‘Campbell will lie, but he never lies on paper,’ i. 417, n. 5;
’Knowing as you do the disposition of your countrymen to tell
lies in favour of each other,’ ii. 296;
’He lies and he knows he lies,’ iv. 49;
’The man who says so lies,’ iv. 273;
’There are inexcusable lies and consecrated lies,’ i. 355.
LIFE. ‘A great city is the school for studying life,’ iii. 253;
’His life was marred by drink and insolence,’ iv. 161, n. 4;
’It is driving on the system of life,’ iv. 112;
’Life stands suspended and motionless,’ iii. 419;
’The tide of life has driven us different ways,’ iii. 22.
LIGHTS. ‘Let us have some more of your northern lights; these are mere farthing candles,’ v. 57, n. 3.
LIMBS. ‘The limbs will quiver and move when the soul is gone,’ iii. 38, n. 6.
LINK. ‘Nay. Sir, don’t you perceive that one link cannot clank,’ iv. 317.
LITTLE. ‘It must be born with a man to be contented to take up with little things,’ iii. 241.
LOCALLY. ‘He is only locally at rest,’ iii. 241.
LONDON. ‘A London morning does not go with the sun,’ iv. 72;
’When a man is tired of London he is tired of life,’ iii. 178.
LORD. ‘His parts, Sir, are pretty well for a Lord,’ iii. 35;
’Great lords and great ladies don’t love to have their mouths
stopped,’ iv. 116;
’A wit among Lords’: See below, WITS.
LOUSE. See above, FLEA.
LOVE. ‘It is commonly a weak man who marries for love,’ iii. 3;
’Sir, I love Robertson, and I won’t talk of his book,’ ii. 53;
’You all pretend to love me, but you do not love me so well as
I myself do,’ iv. 399, n. 6.
LUXURY. ‘No nation was ever hurt by luxury,’ ii. 218.
LYING. ‘By his lying we lose not only our reverence for him, but all comfort in his conversation,’ iv. 178.
M.
MACHINE. ‘If a man would rather be the machine I cannot argue with him,’ v. 117.
MADE DISH. ‘As for Maclaurin’s imitation of a made dish, it was a wretched attempt,’ i. 469.
MADHOUSES. ‘If you should search all the madhouses in England, you would not find ten men who would write so, and think it sense,’ iv. 170.
MADNESS. ‘With some people gloomy penitence is only madness turned upside down,’ iii. 27.
MANKIND. ‘As I know more of mankind I expect less of them,’ iv. 239.
MANY. ‘Yes, Sir, many men, many women, and many children,’ i. 396.
MARKET. ‘A horse that is brought to market may not be bought, though he is a very good horse,’ iv. 172; ‘Let her carry her praise to a better market,’ iii. 293.
MARTYRDOM. ‘Martyrdom is the test,’ iv. 12.
MAST. ‘A man had better work his way before the mast than read them through,’ iv. 308.
MEAL. ‘He takes more corn than he can make into meal,’ iv. 98.
MEANLY. ‘Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea,’ iii. 265.
MEMORY. ‘The true art of memory is the art of attention,’ iv. 126, n. 6.
MEN. ‘Johnson was willing to take men as they are’ (Boswell), iii. 282.
MERCHANT. ‘An English Merchant is a new species of gentleman,’ i. 491, n. 3.
MERIT. ‘Like all other men who have great friends, you begin to feel the pangs of neglected merit,’ iv. 248.
MERRIMENT. ‘It would be as wild in him to come into company without merriment, as for a highwayman to take the road without his pistols,’ iii. 389.
MIGHTY. ‘There is nothing in this mighty misfortune,’ i. 422.
MILK. ‘They are gone to milk the bull,’ i. 444.
MILLIONS. ‘The interest of millions must ever prevail over that of thousands,’ ii. 127.
MIND. ‘A man loves to review his own mind,’ iii. 228;
’Get as much force of mind as you can,’ iv. 226;
‘He fairly puts his mind to yours,’ iv. 179;
’The true, strong, and sound mind is the mind that can embrace
equally great things and small,’ iii. 334;
’They had mingled minds,’ iv. 308;
’To have the management of the mind is a great art,’ ii. 440.
MISER. ‘He has not learnt to be a miser,’ v. 316.
MISERY. ‘It would be misery to no purpose,’ ii. 94; ‘Where there is nothing but pure misery, there never is any recourse to the mention of it,’ iv. 31.
MISFORTUNES. ‘If a man talks of his misfortunes, there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him,’ iv. 31.
MISS. ‘Very well for a young Miss’s verses,’ iii. 319.
MONARCHY. ‘You are for making a monarchy of what should be a a republic’ (Goldsmith), ii. 257.
MONEY. ‘Getting money is not all a man’s business,’ iii. 182;
’No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money,’ iii. 19;
’Perhaps the money might be found, and he was sure that
his wife was gone,’ iv. 319;
’There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed
than in getting money,’ ii. 323;
’You must compute what you give for money,’ iii. 400.
MONUMENT, ‘Like the Monument,’ i. 199.
MOUTH. ‘He could not mouth and strut as he used to do, after having been in the pillory,’ iii. 315.
MOVE. ‘When I am to move, there is no matter which leg I move first,’ ii. 230.
MUDDY. ‘He is a very pious man, but he is always muddy,’ ii. 460.
MURDER. ‘He practised medicine by chance, and grew wise only by murder,’ v. 93, n. 4.
N.
NAMES. ‘I do not know which of them calls names best,’ ii. 37;
’The names carry the poet, not the poet the names,’ iii. 318.
NAP. ‘I never take a nap after dinner, but when I have had a bad night, and then the nap takes me,’ ii. 407.
NARROWNESS. ‘Occasionally troubled with a fit of narrowness’
(Boswell), iv. 191.
NATION. ‘The true state of every nation is the state of common life,’ v. 109, n. 6.
NATIONAL. ‘National faith is not yet sunk so low,’ iv. 21.
NATIVE PLACE. ‘Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place,’ ii. 141.
NATURE. ‘All the rougher powers of nature except thunder were in motion,’ iii. 455; ‘You are so grossly ignorant of human nature as not to know that a man may be very sincere in good principles without having good practice,’ v. 359; ‘Nature will rise up, and, claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system,’ i. 424.
NECESSITY. ‘As to the doctrine of necessity, no man believes it,’ iv. 329.
NECK. ‘He gart Kings ken that they had a lith in their neck’ (Lord Auchinleck), v. 382, n. 2; ‘On a thirtieth of January every King in Europe would rise with a crick in his neck’ (Quin), v. 382, n. 2; ‘If you have so many things that will break, you had better break your neck at once, and there’s an end on’t,’ iii. 153.
NEGATIVE. ‘She was as bad as negative badness could be,’ v. 231.
NEVER. ‘Never try to have a thing merely to show that you cannot have it,’ iv. 205.
NEW. ‘I found that generally what was new was false’ (Goldsmith), iii. 376.
NEWSPAPERS. ‘They have a trick of putting everything into the newspapers,’ iii. 330.
NICHOLSON. ‘My name might originally have been Nicholson,’ i. 439.
NINEPENCE. See DRAW.
No. ‘No tenth transmitter of a foolish face’ (Savage), i. 166.
NON-ENTITY. ‘A man degrading himself to a non-entity,’ v. 277.
NONSENSE. ‘A man who talks nonsense so well must know that he is talking nonsense,’ ii. 74; ‘Nonsense can be defended but by nonsense,’ ii. 78.
NOSE. ‘He may then go and take the King of Prussia by the nose, at the head of his army,’ ii. 229.
NOTHING. ‘Rather to do nothing than to do good is the lowest state of a degraded mind,’ iv. 352; ‘Sir Thomas civil, his lady nothing,’ v. 449.
NOVELTIES. ‘This is a day of novelties,’ v. 120.
NURSE. ‘There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse,’ ii. 474.
O.
OBJECT. ‘Nay, Sir, if you are born to object I have done with you,’ v. 151.
OBJECTIONS. ‘So many objections might be made to everything, that
nothing could overcome them but the necessity of doing something,’
ii. 128;
’There is no end of objections,’ iii. 26.
OBLIVION. ‘That was a morbid oblivion,’ v. 68.
ODD. ‘Nothing odd will do long,’ ii. 449.
ON’T. ‘I’ll have no more on’t,’ iv. 300.
OPPRESSION. ‘Unnecessarily to obtrude unpleasing ideas is a species of oppression,’ v. 82, n. 2.
ORCHARD. ‘If I come to an orchard,’ &c., ii. 96.
OUT. ‘A man does not love to go to a place from whence he comes out exactly as he went in,’ iv. 90.
OUTLAW. ‘Sir, he leads the life of an outlaw,’ ii. 375.
OUT-VOTE. ‘Though we cannot out-vote them we will out-argue them,’ iii. 234.
OVERFLOWED. ‘The conversation overflowed and drowned him,’ ii. 122.
OWL. ‘Placing a timid boy at a public school is forcing an owl upon day,’ iv. 312.
P.
PACKHORSE. ‘A carrier who has driven a packhorse,’ &c., v. 395.
PACKTHREAD. ‘When I take up the end of a web, and find it packthread,
I do not expect, by looking further, to find embroidery,’ ii. 88.
PACTOLUS. ‘Sir, had you been dipt in Pactolus, I should not have noticed you,’ iv. 320.
PAIN. ‘He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man,’ ii. 435, n. 7.
PAINTED. ‘Hailes’s Annals of Scotland have not that painted form which is the taste of this age,’ iii. 58.
PAINTING. ‘Painting, Sir, can illustrate, but cannot inform,’ iv. 321.
PALACES. ‘We are not to blow up half a dozen palaces because one cottage is burning,’ ii. 90.
PAMPER. ‘No, no, Sir; we must not pamper them,’ iv. 133.
PANT. ‘Prosaical rogues! next time I write, I’ll make both time and space pant,’ iv. 25.
PARADOX. ‘No, Sir, you are not to talk such paradox,’ ii. 73.
PARCEL. ‘We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice’ (Lord Lucan’s anecdote of Johnson), iv. 87.
PARENTS. ‘Parents not in any other respect to be numbered with robbers and assassins,’ &c., iii. 377, n. 3.
PARNASSUS. See CRITICISM.
PARSIMONY. ‘He has the crime of prodigality and the wretchedness of parsimony,’ iii. 317.
PARSONS. ‘This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive,’ iv. 76.
PATRIOTISM. ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,’ ii. 348.
PATRIOTS. ‘Patriots spring up like mushrooms’ (Sir R. Walpole), iv.
87, n. 2;
’Don’t let them be patriots,’ iv. 87.
PATRON. ‘The Patron and the jail,’ i. 264.
PECCANT. ‘Be sure that the steam be directed to thy head, for that is the peccant part,’ ii. 100.
PEGGY. ‘I cannot be worse, and so I’ll e’en take Peggy,’ ii. 101.
PELTING. ‘No, Sir, if they had wit they should have kept pelting me with pamphlets,’ ii. 308.
PEN. ‘No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had,’ iv. 29.
PEOPLE. ‘The lairds, instead of improving their country, diminished their people,’ v. 300.
Per. ‘Per mantes notos et flumina nota,’ i. 49, n. 4; v. 456, n. 1.
PERFECT. ‘Endeavour to be as perfect as you can in every respect,’ iv. 338.
PERISH. ‘Let the authority of the English government perish rather than be maintained by iniquity,’ ii. 121.
PETTY. ‘These are the petty criticisms of petty wits,’ i. 498.
PHILOSOPHER. ‘I have tried in my time to be a philosopher; but I don’t know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in’ (O. Edwards), iii. 305.
PHILOSOPHICAL. ‘We may suppose a philosophical day-labourer,…. but we find no such philosophical day-labourer,’ v. 328.
Philosophus. ‘Magis philosophus quam Christianus,’ ii. 127.
PHILOSOPHY. ‘It seems to be part of the despicable philosophy of the time to despise monuments of sacred magnificence,’ v. 114, n. 1.
PICTURE. ‘Sir, among the anfractuosities of the human mind I know not if it may not be one, that there is a superstitious reluctance to sit for a picture,’ iv. 4.
PIETY. ‘A wicked fellow is the most pious when he takes to it. He’ll beat you all at piety,’ iv. 289.
PIG. ‘Pig has, it seems, not been wanting to man, but man to pig,’
iv. 373;
’It is said the only way to make a pig go forward is to pull him
back by the tail,’ v. 355.
PILLOW. ‘That will do — all that a pillow can do,’ iv. 411.
PISTOL. ‘When his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it’ (Colley Cibber) ii. 100.
PITY. ‘We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards,’ iii. 11.
PLAYER. ‘A player — a showman — a fellow who exhibits himself for a shilling,’ ii. 234.
PLEASANT. ‘Live pleasant’ (Burke), i. 344.
PLEASE. ‘It is very difficult to please a man against his will,’ iii. 69.
PLEASED. ‘To make a man pleased with himself, let me tell you, is doing a very great thing,’ iii. 328.
