I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the alleg…

Samuel Johnson
884 citations
I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world. ✨ Quoted in Mrs Piozzi Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson (1786).
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Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of language. ✨ 'A Dictionary of the English Language' (1755) preface (on citations of usage in a dictionary)
Assertion is not argument; to contradict the statement of an opponent is not proof that you are correct.
A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner. ✨ James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1786). Boswell's Life of Johnson: including Boswell's Journal of a tour of the Hebri … ▶
Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded; for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadsul than its extinction. ✨ The Idler: With A … ▶
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I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world. ✨ Quoted in Mrs Piozzi Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson (1786).

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