Sourced and curated.

I love any discourse of rivers, and fish and fishing.

The Compleat Angler · 1653

★ 1.1

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D · 1776

★ 1.3

Joseph Addison

The Spectator · 1711

★ 1.8

Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics, that it can never be fully learnt.

The Compleat Angler · 1653

★ 1.9

I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning.

Wide and undetermined Prospects are as pleasing to the Fancy, as the Speculations of Eternity or Infinitude are to the Understanding.

The Compleat Angler · 1653

★ 1.9

Poem

Joseph Addison

1712

★ 1.9

Travel writing

Why, sir, a man grows better humoured as he grows older. He improves by experience. When young, he thinks himself of great consequence, and every thing of importance. As he advances in life, he learns to think himself of no consequence, and little things of little importance; and so he becomes more patient, and better pleased.

To be of no Church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind, unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by eternal ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.

James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides · 1773

★ 1.9

Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets · 1781

★ 1.9

I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing.

What Sculpture is to a Block of Marble, Education is to a Human Soul.

The Compleat Angler · 1653

★ 1.9

Poem

Joseph Addison

1711

★ 1.9

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and a little to be enjoyed.

1751

★ 1.9

Novel

The Prince of Abissinia: A Tale · 1759

★ 1.9

Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather political than religious.

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D · 1763

★ 1.9

It is so far from being natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilized society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together.

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D · 1772

★ 1.9

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindness there is at last one which makes the heart run over.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D · 1777

★ 1.9

Letter

1782

★ 1.9

That all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D · 1784

★ 1.9

I think no innocent species of wit or pleasantry should be suppressed; and that a good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation.

He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D · 1784

★ 1.9