What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you unde…

Samuel Johnson
884 citations
What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company. ✨ Samuel Johnson (1836). Johnsoniana: Or, Supplement to Boswell: Being Anecdotes and Sayings of Dr. Johnson, p.208
Politics
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Pity is not natural to man. Children are always cruel. Savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason. We may have uneasy sensations from seeing a creature in di … ▶
Every reader should remember the diffidence of Socrates, and repair by his candour the injuries of time: he should impute the seeming defects of his author to some chasm of intelligence, and suppose … ▶
As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly. ✨ Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry f … ▶
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What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company. ✨ Samuel Johnson (1836). Johnsoniana: Or, Supplement to Boswell: Being Anecdotes and Sayings of Dr. Johnson, p.208

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