Samuel Johnson according to Boswell

I picked up an old, hardback copy of James Boswell's London  Journal from a charity shop. It was a revelation; full of detailed portraits of those he met, verbatim conversations, and his own moral failures. But it is his account of the life of Samuel Johnson for which he is best know. Here are few snippets of Johnsons very forthright opinions:

 He who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else.

Wickedness is always easier than virtue. For it takes a shortcut to everything. It is much easier to steal £100 then get it by labour.

On Alexander Pope:

Pope  had genius.
A mind active, ambitious and adventurous, 
Always investigating, always aspiring. 
In its widest searches, still longing to go forward. 
In its highest flights, still wishing to be higher. 
Always imagining something greater than it knows. 
Always endeavouring more than it can do.

On Reading

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

Works of imagination excel by their allurement and delight by their power of attracting and detaining the attention. That book is good in vain, which the reader throws away. He only is the master who keeps the mind in pleasing captivity; whose pages are perused with eagerness, and in hope of new pleasures are perused again, and whose conclusion is perceived with an eye of sorrow such as a traveller casts upon departing day.

On Paradise Lost by Milton

The want of human interest is always felt. Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read Milton for instruction, retire harassed and overburdened and look elsewhere for recreation. We desert our master and seek for companions.

On Resolutions

'I have now spent fifty-five years in resolving; having, from the earliest time almost that I can remember, been forming schemes of a better life. I have done nothing. The need of doing, therefore, is pressing, since the time of doing is short. 

Idleness is a disease which must be combated; but I would not advise a rigid adherence to a particular plan of study. I myself have never persisted in any plan for two days together.

Foreign Affairs

The Europeans have scarcely visited any coast but to gratify avarice and extend corruption; to arrogate dominion without right and practice cruelty without incentive;

The taxation issue  iin the American colonies that led to the War of independence, was being argued over in England. Boswell was sympathetic to the colonists. Johnson said:

"They are a race of convicts and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them  short of hanging"