Date: 1785

"He [Johnson] said, he did not grudge Burke's being the first man in the House of Commons, for he was the first man every where; but he grudged that a fellow who makes no figure in company, and has a mind as narrow as the neck of a vinegar cruet, should make a figure in the House of Commons, mere...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"I have often experienced, that scenes through which a man has passed, improve by lying in the memory: they grow mellow."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: January 19, 1791

"But it is then, and basking in the sunshine of unmerited fortune, that low, sordid, ungenerous, and reptile souls swell with their hoarded poisons; it is then that they display their odious splendour, and shine out in full lustre of their native villainy and baseness."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1791

"Every page of the Rambler shews a mind teeming with classical allusion and poetical imagery."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1818, 1859

"Now this is by no means possible, for as soon as we turn into ourselves to make the attempt, and seek for once to know ourselves fully by means of introspective reflection, we are lost in a bottomless void; we find ourselves like the hollow glass globe, from out of which a voice speaks whose cau...

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)