Top 100 Boswell's Quotes
#2. Boswell's Johnson is the word made flesh ... an extemporaneous man talking himself into the thick of every occasion (in a world ofoccasions if nothing else) and therefore no monument at all but all that can be saved of a man alive in the pages of a book.
Marvin Mudrick
#3. Of all the queer sources of romance, ours lay in the discovery that each was an addict of Boswell's Life of Johnson. H.E.G. had a first edition of the Journey to the Hebrides, which I coveted mightily. Why not acquire the book honorably, marry the man, and have it around the house?
Beatrice Fairfax
#4. The heart was a tyrant, like a child demanding ice cream instead of broccoli and throwing a fit to get its way.
Robert Boswell
#5. 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
#6. There is no substitute for excellence. Not even success.
Thomas Boswell
#7. A major golf tournament is 40,000 sadists watching 144 masochists.
Thomas Boswell
#8. 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.
James Boswell
#9. I, who have no sisters or brothers, look with some degree of innocent envy on those who may be said to be born to friends.
James Boswell
#10. Any person claiming to be a baseball fan who does not also claim to have invented the quickest, simplest and most complete method of keeping score probably is a fraud.
Thomas Boswell
#12. Nothing truly lasts forever, not even immortals. - Jonathan.
Helen Boswell
#13. Born to an age where horror has become commonplace, where tragedy has, by its monotonous repetition, become a parody of sorrow, we need to fence off a few parks where humans try to be fair, where skill has some hope of reward, where absurdity has a harder time than usual getting a ticket.
Thomas Boswell
#14. Quotation is more universal and more ancient than one would perhaps believe.
James Boswell
#15. I write a ridiculous number of drafts. The characters change and grow through the drafting, and my understanding of them deepens. Creating characters in a novel is like shooting at clay pigeons and missing, and then missing more productively as the narrative continues.
Robert Boswell
#16. When a man is familiar with many people he must expect many disagreeable familiarizations.
James Boswell
#17. Familiarity, and a few dozen cheap flyballs off the Monster, breed contempt.
Thomas Boswell
#18. Baseball means Spring's Here. Football means Winter's Coming.
Thomas Boswell
#19. A good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation.
James Boswell
#20. [A]s a lady adjusts her dress before a mirror, a man adjusts his character by looking at his journal.
James Boswell
#21. I am committed to ensure that our intelligence community, law enforcement, medical professionals, and military have the information and funding needed to protect the American people from threats at home and abroad.
Leonard Boswell
#22. I have seen many a bear led by a man: but I never before saw a man led by a bear.
James Boswell
#23. There is hope for a man who has never read Malory or Boswell or Tristam Shandy or Shakespeare's Sonnets: but what can you do with a man who says he "has read" them, meaning he has read them once, and thinks that this settles the matter?
C.S. Lewis
#24. Blessed is he who has learned to laugh at himself for he shall never cease to be entertained.
John Boswell
#25. 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
#26. What was your life anyway but the tiny black spot of what you've done against the infinite white of possibility?
Robert Boswell
#27. 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
#28. A companion loves some agreeable qualities which a man may possess, but a friend loves the man himself.
James Boswell
#29. Each state in the Union is honored in the order of when it ratified the Constitution and became a part of the United States. This September it is Iowa's turn. Iowa became the 29th state to be admitted to the union on December 28, 1846.
Leonard Boswell
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. You got secrets you better keep
Take flight before she cuts you deep
- Sam's song
Helen Boswell
#33. 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
#34. The 9/11 Commission recently released their report, citing important changes which need to be made to improve our nation's homeland security. I voiced my disappointment with the House leadership when this report was left until after the August recess for action.
Leonard Boswell
#35. To me it's awe-inspiring ... All those billions of little evolutionary steps leading to this sensation of being "me."
Simon Boswell
#36. 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
#37. 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
#38. A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinter legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to see it done at all.
James Boswell
#40. We often observe in lawyers, who as Quicquid agunt homines is the matter of law suits, are sometimes obliged to pick up a temporary knowledge of an art or science, of which they understood nothing till their brief was delivered, and appear to be much masters of it.
James Boswell
#41. Everything about his character and manners was forcible and violent; there never was any moderation; many a day did he fast, many a year did he refrain from wine; but when he did eat, it was voraciously; when he did drink wine, it was copiously. He could practise abstinence, but not temperance.
James Boswell
#42. This is wrong. Out of this world wrong.
But then again, so am I.
Helen Boswell
#43. 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
#44. The March on Washington affirmed our values as a people: equality and opportunity for all. Forty-one years ago, during a time of segregation, these were an ideal.
Leonard Boswell
#45. And besides, I don't design my smiles to be nets because I'm not fishing
Roseanna Boswell
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. 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
#50. Our nation's military and law enforcement personal work hard to protect us. We must thank them for their continued vigilance. Without their sacrifice we would less capable of protecting our nation.
Leonard Boswell
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.
James Boswell
#54. 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
#55. As a member of Congress, I believe it is the responsibility of those elected to represent the people at every level of government to ensure that our government works to ensure that every person who wants gainful employment has it.
Leonard Boswell
#56. In every place, where there is any thing worthy of observation, there should be a short printed directory for strangers.
James Boswell
#57. The difference between greatness and mediocrity is often how an individual views a mistake.
Nelson Boswell
#58. Elizabeth Searle writes with intelligence, passion and wit. She's one of the best young writers around.
Robert Boswell
#59. Nay, Sir, it was not the WINE that made your head ache, but the SENSE that I put into it'
'What, Sir! will sense make the head ache?'
'Yes, Sir, (with a smile,) when it is not used to it.
James Boswell
#60. 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
#61. Every sane person has to find every day some manner of accommodating the impossible, some way of covering up for the failures of the rational world. This might actually be a reasonable definition of sanity.
Robert Boswell
#62. The man who stops making new friends eventually will have none.
James Boswell
#63. My mind was, as it were, strongly impregnated with the Johnsonian ether.
James Boswell
#65. Baseball has traditionally possessed a wonderful lack of seriousness. The game's best player, Babe Ruth, was a Rabelaisian fat man, and its most loved manager, Casey Stengel, spoke gibberish. In this lazy sport, only the pitcher pours sweat. Then he takes three days off.
Thomas Boswell
#66. Every suit I wear is custom-made by a guy named Waraire Boswell in L.A.
Raphael Saadiq
#67. You get to me all of the time. Always have. In all the good ways.
Helen Boswell
#68. Baseball is really two sports
the summer game and the autumn game. One is the leisurely pastime of our national mythology. The other is not so gentle.
Thomas Boswell
#69. What an insignificant life is this which I am now leading!
James Boswell
#70. A good umpire, like a good FBI agent, is never noticed if he is doing his job.
Thomas Boswell
#71. O Rosey,
why don't you stay just home
and eat chocolate bars
and read Boswell
all this society-izing will bring you nothing but lines of anxiety on your face
and a sociable smile ain't nothing but teeth
Jack Kerouac
#72. Decades after a person has stopped collecting bubble gum cards, he can still discover himself collecting ballparks ... their smells, their special seasons, their moods.
Thomas Boswell
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. Barge traffic on the Mississippi River represents the most efficient, most cost-effective, most environmentally sound means of transporting commodity goods from this region of the country to market.
Leonard Boswell
#76. 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
#77. I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically.
James Boswell
#78. I think there is a blossom about me of something more distinguished than the generality of mankind.
James Boswell
#79. Every man has a day in his life when nobody can defeat him.
Robert Boswell
#80. 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
#82. There is indeed a strange prejudice against Quotation.
James Boswell
#83. For the good of our environment, the good of the economy, and the good of the Nation, I strongly urge support of the upper Mississippi locks and dams project.
Leonard Boswell
#84. He has a beauty to him that is not quite angelic, a quality that's both ethereal and dark. (Jonathan)
Helen Boswell
#85. 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
#86. Cheating is baseball's oldest profession. No other game is so rich in skullduggery, so suited to it or so proud of it.
Thomas Boswell
#87. I say the moon in the night in which we live illuminates
Britt Boswell
#88. 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
#89. He had no settled plan of life, nor looked forward at all, but merely lived from day to day. Yet he read a great deal in a desultory manner, without any scheme of study, as chance threw books in his way, and inclination directed him through them.
James Boswell
#90. 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
#93. The pride people take in their work transcends to their homes, their education, families and communities.
Leonard Boswell
#94. [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
#95. I am sensible that my keenness of temper, and a vanity to be distinguished for the day, make me too often splash in life ... I amresolved to restrain myself and attend more to decorum.
James Boswell
#96. The first and most important step toward success is the feeling that we can succeed.
Nelson Boswell
#97. We had some port, and drank damnation to the play and eternal remorse to the author.
James Boswell
#98. Giving someone a piece of your soul is better than giving a piece of your heart. Because souls are eternal.
Helen Boswell
#99. 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
#100. 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
