The French The French are a gross, ill-bred, untaught people; a lady there will spit on the floor, and rub it with her foot. What I gained by being in France was, learning to be better satisfied with my own country.-Life. Johnson's Travels in France. 1775. of Gullibility I'll carry a Frenchman to St. Paul's ChurchFrenchmen yard, and I'll tell him, "By our law you may walk half round the church; but, if you walk round the whole, you will be punished capitally ;" and he will believe me at once. Now, no Englishman would readily swallow such a thing: he would go and inquire of somebody else.-Journal. October 18. Friends They that mean to make no use of friends will be at little trouble to gain them; and to be without friendship is to be without one of the first comforts of our present state.-Letter to Mrs. Thrale, No. 329. Friendship It is pleasing, in the silence of solitude, to think that there is one at least, however distant, of whose benevolence there is little doubt, and whom there is yet hope of seeing again.-Life. to Langton. March 20, 1782. Friendship Friendship Letter The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay.-Idler, No. 23. Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short Idler, No. 23. intermissions. D How many friendships have you known. Friendship formed upon principles of virtue? Most friendships are formed by caprice or by chance, mere confederacies in vice or leagues in folly.-Life. May 19, 1784. Friendship Friendship Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship.-Idler, No. 23. That friendship may be at once fond and lasting, there must not only be equal virtue on each part, but virtue of the same kind.-Rambler, No. 64. Those that have loved longest love best. Friendships A friend may be found and lost; but an old friend never can be found, and nature has provided that he cannot easily be lost.-Letter to Mrs. Thrale, No. 327. Limits Few love their friends so well as not to Friendship desire superiority by inexpensive benefaction. -The False Alarm. Friendship of The friendship of students and of beauties Students and Beauties is for the most part equally sincere and equally durable: they are both exposed to perpetual jealousies, and both incessantly employed in schemes to intercept the praises of each other.-Adventurer, No. 45. Frugality Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty. Frugality Frugality is not only the basis of quiet, but of beneficence. No man can help others that wants help himself; we must have enough before we have to spare.-Life. Letter to Boswell. February, 1783. Fruit in its No man can taste the fruits of autumn Season while he is delighting himself with the flowers of spring.-Rasselas, ch. xxix. Futurity Every thing future is to be estimated by a wise man, in proportion to the probability of attaining it, and its value when attained.-Rambler, No. 20. It is good to speak dubiously about Futurity futurity. It is likewise not amiss to hope. -Letter 198 to Mrs. Thrale. When we are become purely rational, Future State many of our friendships will be cut off. Many friendships are formed by a community of sensual pleasures all these will be cut off. We form many friendships with bad men, because they have agreeable but, after death, We form many qualities, and they can be useful to us; they can no longer be of use to us. friendships by mistake, imagining people to be different from what they really are. After death, we shall see every one in a true light. Then, they talk of our meeting our relations; but then all relationship is dissolved; and we shall have no regard for one person more than another, but for their real value. However, we shall either have the satisfaction of meeting our friends, or be satisfied without meeting them.-Life. March 27, 1772. Gaming It is scarcely possible to pass an hour in honest conversation, without being able when we rise from it, to please ourselves with having given or received some advantages; but a man may shuffle cards, or rattle dice, from noon to midnight, without tracing any new idea in his mind; or being able to recollect the day by any other token than his gain or loss, and a confused remembrance of agitated passions and clamorous altercations.-Rambler, No. 80. Gaming I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsocial man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good. Trade gives employment to numbers, and so produces intermediate good.-Life. April 6, 1772. It is not roguery to play with a man who Gaming is ignorant of the game, while you are master of it, and so win his money: for he thinks he can play better than you as you think you can play better than he; and the superior skill carries it.—Life. 6, 1772. A Botanical April Is not every garden a botanical garden ?— Life. June 4, 1781. Garrick's Genius [Οἱ φίλοι, οὗ φίλος]-He had friends, but no friend.-Life. April 24, 1779. People are not born with a particular genius or particular employments or studies; for it will be like saying that a man could see a great way east, but could not west.-Anecdotes by Miss Reynolds. Genius Genius The highest praise of genius is original invention.-Life of Milton, Vol. II. Genius is the parent of truth and courage; and these, united, dread no opposition.— Account of the Life of Benvenuto Cellini. Genius not Gentility and No man is a rhetorician or philosopher by chance. Adventurer, No. 115. It is certain that a man may be very imMorality moral with exterior grace.-Life. A Gentleman When you have said a man of gentle manners, you have said enough.-Life. Langton's Collectanea, 1780. Gloominess It is not becoming in a man to have so little acquiescence in the ways of Providence, as to be gloomy because he has not obtained as much preferment as he expected.-Life. June 2, 1781. When any fit of gloominess, or perversion Gloominess of mind, lays hold upon you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaints, but exert your whole care to hide it. By endeavouring to hide it you will drive it away. Be always busy.-Life, |