5. Death; Friendship; Mourning
I have ever since [since his wife's death] seemed to myself
broken off from mankind; a kind of solitary wanderer in the wild
of life, without any direction, or fixed point of view: a gloomy
gazer on the world to which I have little relation. Yet I would
endeavor, by the help of you and your brother, to supply the want
of a closer union, by friendship: and hope to have long the
pleasure of being, dear Sir, most affectionately yours...
Boswell: Life
Link
7. Friendship; Pleasure
"It is strange how many things will happen to intercept every
pleasure, though it [be] only that of two friends meeting
together."
Boswell: Life
Link
8. Friendship
"If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through
life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, Sir, should
keep his friendship in constant repair."
Boswell: Life
Link
116. Admiration; Friendship; Judgement;
Love
I regretted that I had lost much of my disposition to admire,
which people generally do as they advance in life.
Johnson: "Sir, as a man advances in life, he gets what is
better than admiration, --judgement, to estimate things at their
true value." I still insisted that admiration was more pleasing
than judgement, as love is more pleasing than friendship. The
feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled
with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.
Johnson: "No, Sir, admiration and love are like being
intoxicated with champagne; judgement and friendship like being
enlivened."
Boswell: Life
Link
229. Friendship
"When I came to Lichfield, I found my old friend Harry Jackson
dead. It was a loss, and a loss not to be repaired, as he was
one of the companions of my childhood. I hope we may long
continue to gain friends, but the friends which merit or
usefulness can procure us, are not able to supply the place of
old acquaintance, with whom the days of youth may be retraced,
and those images revived which gave the earliest delight."
Johnson: Letter to Boswell
Link
294. After-life; Friendship
I observed, that the death of our friends might be a consolation
against the fear of our own dissolution, because we might have
more friends in the other world than this. He perhaps felt this
as a reflection upon his apprehension as to death; and said,
with heat, "How can a man know where his departed friends
are, or whether they will be his friends in the other world? How
many friendships have you known formed upon principles of virtue?
Most friendships are formed by caprice or by chance, mere
confederacies in vice or leagues in folly."
Boswell: Life
Link
317. Friendship
"Sir, I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a
new acquaintance."
Boswell: Life
Link
600. Friendship; Offense
"It is by no means necessary to imagine that he who is offended
at advice was ignorant of the fault, and resents the admonition
as a false charge; for perhaps it is most natural to be enraged
when there is the strongest conviction of our own guilt. While
we can easily defend our character, we are no more disturbed at
an accusation than we are alarmed by an enemy whom we are sure to
conquer; and whose attack, therefore, will bring us honour
without danger. But when a man feels the reprehension of a
friend seconded by his own heart, he is easily heated into
resentment and revenge, either because he hoped that the fault of
which he was conscious had escaped the notice of others; or that
his friend had looked upon it with tenderness and extenuation,
and excused it for the sake of his other virtues; or had
considered him as too wise to need advice, or too delicate to be
shocked with reproach; or, because we cannot feel without pain
those reflections roused which we have been endeavouring to lay
asleep; and when pain has produced anger, who would not
willingly believe, that it ought to be discharged on others than
on himself?"
Johnson: Rambler #40 (August 4, 1750)
Link
601. Friendship; Honesty;
Offense
"The resentment produced by sincerity, whatever be its immediate
cause, is so certain, and generally so keen, that very few have
magnanimity sufficient for the practice of a duty, which above
most others exposes its votaries to hardships and persecutions;
yet friendship without it is of very little value, since the
great use of so close an intimacy is, that our virtues may be
guarded and encouraged, and our vices repressed in their first
appearance by timely detection and salutary remonstrances."
Johnson: Rambler #40 (August 4, 1750)
Link
602. Criticism; Friendship;
Honesty
"It is decreed by Providence, that nothing truly valuable shall
be obtained in our present state, but with difficulty and danger.
He that hopes for that advantage which is to be gained from
unrestrained communication must sometimes hazard, by unpleasing
truths, that friendship which he aspires to merit. The chief
rule to observed in the exercise of this dangerous office, is to
preserve it pure from all mixture of interest or vanity; to
forbear admonition or reproof, when our consciences tell us that
they are incited, not by the hopes of reforming faults, but the
desire of showing our discrenment, or gratifying our pride by the
mortification of another."
Johnson: Rambler #40 (August 4, 1750)
Link
603. Criticism; Friendship;
Honesty
"It is not indeed certain, that the most refined caution will
find a proper time for bringing a man to the knowledge of his own
failing, or the most zealous benevolence reconcile him to that
judgment by which they are detected; but he who endeavours only
the happiness of him whom he reproves will always have either the
satisfaction of obtaining or deserving kindness; if he succeeds,
he benefits his friend; and if he fails, he has at least the
consciousness that he suffers for only doing well."
Johnson: Rambler #40 (August 4, 1750)
Link
669. Estrangement; Friendship
"Of the gradual abatement of kindness between friends the
beginning is often scarcely discernible by themselves, and the
process is continued by petty provocations, and incivilities
sometimes peevishly returned, and sometimes contemptuously
neglected, which would escape all attention but that of pride,
and drop from any memory but that of resentment."
Johnson: Pope (Lives of the Poets)
Link
683. Friendship; Whining
"To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain,
is one of the duties of friendship."
Johnson: Rambler #59 (October 9, 1750)
Link
702. Friendship
"So many qualities are indeed requisite to the possibility of
friendship, and so many accidents must concur to its rise and its
continuance, that the greatest part of mankind content themselves
without it, and supply its place as they can, with interest and
dependence."
Johnson: Rambler #64 (October 27, 1750)
Link
703. Friendship
"He cannot properly be chosen for a friend, whose kindness is
exhaled by his own warmth, or frozen by the first blast of
slander; he cannot be a useful counsellor, who will hear no
opinion but his own; he will not much invite confidence whose
principal maxim is to suspect; nor can the candour and frankness
of that man be much esteemed, who spreads his arms to humankind,
and makes every man, without distinction, a denizen of his
bosom."
Johnson: Rambler #64 (October 27, 1750)
Link
704. Friendship; Virtue
"That friendship may be at once fond and lasting, there must not
only be equal virtue on each part, but virtue of the same kind;
not only the same end must be proposed, but the same means must
be approved by both. We are often, by superficial
accomplishments and accidental endearments, induced to love those
whom we cannot esteem; we are sometimes, by great abilities, and
incontestable evidences of virtue, compelled to esteem those whom
we cannot love. But friendship, compounded of esteem and love,
derives from one its tenderness, and its permanence from the
other; and therefore, requires not only that its candidates
should gain the judgment, but that they should attract the
affections; that they should not only be firm in the day of
distress, but gay in the hour of jollity; not only useful in
exigences, but pleasing in familiar life; their presence should
give cheerfulness as well as courage, and dispel alike the gloom
of fear and of melancholy."
Johnson: Rambler #64 (October 27, 1750)
Link
705. Argument; Friendsip; Politics;
Religion
"It cannot but be extremely difficult to preserve private
kindness in the midst of public opposition, in which it will
necessarily be involved a thousand incidents, extending their
influence to conversation and privacy. Men engaged, by moral or
religious motives, in contrary parties will generally look with
different eyes upon every man, and decide almost every question
upon different principles. When such occasions of dispute
happen, to comply is to betray our cause, and to maintain
friendship by ceasing to deserve it; to be silent is to lose the
happiness and dignity of independence, to live in perpetual
constraint, and to desert, if not to betray; and who shall
determine which of two friends shall yield, where neither
believes himself mistaken, and both confess the importance of
their question? What then remains but contradiction and debate?
and from those what can be what can be expected but acrimony and
vehemence, the insolence of triumph, the vexation of defeat, and,
in time, a weariness of contest, and an extinction of
benevolence? Exchange of endearments and intercourse of civility
may continue, indeed, as boughs may for a while be verdant when
the root is wounded; but the poison of discord is infused, and
though the countenance may preserve its smile, the heart is
hardening and contracting."
Johnson: Rambler #64 (October 27, 1750)
Link
706. Friendship
"That man will not be long agreeable whom we see only in times of
seriousness and severity; and, therefore, to maintain the
softness and serenity of benevolence, it is necessary that
friends partake each other's pleasures as well as cares, and be
led to the same diversions by similitude of taste."
Johnson: Rambler #64 (October 27, 1750)
Link
707. Friendship
"Friendship is seldom lasting but between equals, or where the
superiority on one side is reduced by some equivalent advantage
on the other. Benefits which cannot be repaid, and obligations
which cannot be discharged, are not commonly found to increase
affection; they excite gratitude indeed, and heighten
veneration, but commonly take away that easy freedom and
familiarity of intercourse, without which, though there may be
fidelity, and zeal, and admiration, there cannot be friendship.
Thus imperfect are all earthly blessings; the great effect of
friendship is benificence, yet by the first act of uncommon
kindness it is endangered, like plants that bear their fruit and
die. Yet this consideration ought not to restrain bounty or
repress compassion; for duty is preferred before convenience,
and he that loses part of the pleasures of freindship by his
generosity gains in its place the gratulation of his
conscience."
Johnson: Rambler #64 (October 27, 1750)
Link
845. Friendship; Letters;
Self-Knowledge
"It has been so long said as to be commonly believed, that the true characters of men may be found in their letters, and that he who writes to his friend lays his heart open before him. But the truth is, that such were the simple friendships of the "Golden Age," and are now the friendships only of children. Very few can boast of hearts which they dare lay open to themselves, and of which, by whatever accident exposed, they do not shun a distinct and continued view; and, certainly, what we hide from ourselves we do not show to our friends. There is, indeed, no transaction which offers stronger temptations to fallacy and sophistication than epistolary intercourse. In the eagerness of conversation the first emotions of the mind often burst out before they are considered; in the tumult of business, interest and passion have their genuine effect; but a friendly letter is a calm and deliberate performance, in the cool of leisure, in the stillness of solitude, and surely no man sits down to depreciate by design his own character."
"Friendship has no tendency to secure veracity; for by whom
can a man so much wish to be thought better than he is, as by him
whose kindness he desires to gain or keep? Even in writing to
the world there is less constraint; the author is not confronted
with the reader, and takes his chance of approbation among the
different dispositions of mankind; but a letter is addressed to
a single mind, of which the prejudices and partialities are
known, and must therefore please, if not by favouring them, by
forbearing to oppose them."
Johnson: Pope (Lives of the Poets)
Link
883. Friendship
"Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of
friendship."
Johnson: Idler #23 (September 23, 1758)
Link
884. Estrangement; Friendship
"The friendship which is to be practised or expected by common
mortals, must take its rise from mutual pleasure, and must end
when the power ceases of delighting each other."
Johnson: Idler #23 (September 23, 1758)
Link
885. Estrangement; Friendship
"Those who would gladly pass their days together may be separated
by the different course of their affairs; and friendship, like
love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by
short intermissions. What we have missed long enough to want it,
we value more when it is regained; but that which has been lost
till it is forgotten, will be found at last with little gladness,
and with still less if a substitute has supplied the place."
Johnson: Idler #23 (September 23, 1758)
Link
886. Friendship; Reunion
"No expectation is more frequently disappointed, than that which
naturally arises in the mind from the prospect of meeting an old
friend after long separation. We expect the attraction to be
revived, and the coalition to be renewed; no man considers how
much alteration time has made in himself, and very few inquire
what effect it has had upon others. The first hour convinces
them, that the pleasure which they have formerly enjoyed is for
ever at an end; different scenes have made different
impressions; the opinions of both are changed; and that
similitude of manners and sentiment is lost, which confirmed them
both in the approbation of themselves."
Johnson: Idler #23 (September 23, 1758)
Link
887. Estrangement; Friendship;
Insecurity
"Friendship is often destroyed by opposition of interest, not
only by the ponderous and visible interest which the desire of
wealth and greatness forms and maintains, but by a thousand
secret and slight competitions, scarcely known to the mind upon
which they operate. There is scarcely any man without some
favourite trifle which he values above greater attainments, some
desire of petty praise which he cannot patiently suffer to be
frustrated. This minute ambition is sometimes crossed before it
is known, and sometimes defeated by wanton petulance; but such
attacks are seldom made without the loss of friendship; for,
whoever has once found the vulnerable part will always be feared,
and the resentment will burn on in secret, of which shame hinders
the discovery."
Johnson: Idler #23 (September 23, 1758)
Link
888. Estrangement; Friendship
"Very slender differences will sometimes part those whom long
reciprocation of civility or beneficence has united."
Johnson: Idler #23 (September 23, 1758)
Link
889. Estrangement; Friendship
"The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or
dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and
too numerous for removal. -- Those who are angry may be
reconciled; those who have been injured may receive a
recompense; but when the desire of pleasing and willingness to
be pleased is silently diminished, the renovation of friendship
is hopeless; as, when the vital powers sink into languor, there
is no longer any use of the physician."
Johnson: Idler #23 (September 23, 1758)
Link
1,015. Friendship; Humanity
"Every man has frequent grievances which only the solicitude of
friendship will discover and remedy, and which would remain for
ever unheeded in the mighty heap of human calamity, were it only
surveyed by the eye of general benevolence equally attentive to
every misery."
Johnson: Rambler #99 (February 26, 1751)
Link
1,017. Conviviality; Friendship
"That friendship may at once be fond and lasting, a conformity of
inclinations is necessary. No man can have much kindness for him
by whom he does not believe himself esteemed, and nothing so
evidently proves esteem as imitation. That benevolence is always
strongest which arises from participation in the same pleasures,
since we are naturally most willing to revive in our minds the
memory of persons with whom the idea of enjoyment is connected.
It is commonly, therefore, to little purpose, that anyone
endeavours to ingratiate himself with such as he cannot accompany
in their amusements and diversions. Men have been known to rise
to favour and to fortune only by being skilful in the sports with
which their patron happened to be delighted, by concurring with
his taste for some particular species of curiosities, by
relishing the same wine, or applauding the same cookery. Even
those whom wisdom or virtue have placed above regard to such
petty recommendations, must nevertheless be gained by similitude
of manners."
Johnson: Rambler #99 (February 26, 1751)
Link
1,309. Friendship; Virtue
"It were happy if, in forming friendships, virtue could concur
with pleasure; but the greatest part of human gratifications
approach so nearly to vice that few who make the delight of
others their rule of conduct can avoid disingenuous compliances;
yet certainly he that suffers himself to be allured from
virtue mistakes his own interest, since he gains succour by
means, for which his friend, if ever he becomes wise, must scorn
him, and for which at last he must scorn himself."
Johnson: Rambler #160 (September 28, 1751)
Link
1,458. Friendship
"Nothing generally endears men so much as participation of
dangers and misfortunes."
Johnson: Rambler #200 (February 15, 1752)
Link
