Talk:James Boswell

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the James Boswell page.
Please sign and date your posts using four tildes (`~~~~`). New discussion topics go at the bottom of the page; click here to start a new topic. New to Wikiquote? Welcome! Frequently asked questions. This is not a forum for general discussion about the page's subject.	Talk page guidelines Be polite Assume good faith No personal attacks Don't bite the newcomers!

Unsourced

Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable and precise source for any quote on this list please move it to James Boswell.

I do not recollect having had any other valuable principle impressed upon me by my father except a strict regard for truth, which he impressed upon my mind by a hearty beating at an early age when I lied, and then talking of the dishonour of lying.

Oh Samuel, that you remember not your greatest triumph! Two fine birds, ripe for the plucking. How you clipped their heads; how they sated your enormous appetite!

For my own part 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.

We bade adieu to each other affectionately in the carriage. When he had got down upon the foot pavement he called out 'Fare you well'; and without looking back, sprung away with a kind of pathetic briskness, if I may use that expression, which seemed to indicate a struggle to conceal uneasiness, and impressed me with a foreboding of our long, long separation.
- On his last meeting with Johnson.

Samuel Johnson: In England we wouldn't think of eating oats. We only feed them to Horses.
Boswell: "Well, maybe that's why in England you have better horses, and in Scotland we have better men".
- Conversation in response to Johnson criticising Boswell for the latter's Scottish habit of eating oats for breakfast.

As I heard it, the response was "Perhaps that is why Scotland is known for the quality of its men and England for the quality of its horses."

And I believe the reference is a footnote in Eric Linklater's superlative "The Survival of Scotland".