Date: 1791

"His mind resembled a fertile, but thin soil. There was a quick, but not a strong vegetation, of whatever chanced to be thrown upon it. No deep root could be struck. The oak of the forest did not grow there: but the elegant shrubbery and the fragrant parterre appeared in gay succession."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1791

"In progress of time, when my mind was, as it were, strongly impregnated with the Johnsonian aether, I could with much more facility and exactness, carry in my memory and commit to paper the exuberant variety of his wisdom and wit."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1791

"Your resolution to obey your father I sincerely approve; but do not accustom yourself to enchain your volatility by vows; they will sometime leave a thorn in your mind, which you will, perhaps, never be able to extract or eject."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1791

"But a convert from Popery to Protestantism, gives up so much of what he has held as sacred as any thing that he retains; there is so much laceration of mind in such a conversion, that it can hardly be sincere and lasting"

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1791

"Yes; Burke is an extraordinary man. His stream of mind is perpetual."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1791

"As in filling a vessel drop by dy drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over. "

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1791

"If his imagination be not sickly and feeble, it 'wings its distant way' far beyond himself, and views the world in unceasing activity of every sort."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1791

"He [Johnson] entered upon a curious discussion of the difference between intuition and sagacity; one being immediate in its effect, the other requiring a circuitous process; one he observed was the eye of the mind, the other the nose of the mind."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1791

"A young gentleman present took up the argument against him, and maintained that no man ever thinks of the nose of the mind, not adverting that though that figurative sense seems strange to us, as very unusual, it is truly not more forced than Hamlet's 'In my mind's eye, Horatio.'"

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1791

"The analogy between body and mind is very general, and the parallel will hold as to their food, as well as any other particular."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)