'Why, Sir, because it is so
much better for a man to be sure that he is never to be intoxicated,
never to lose the power over himself. I shall not begin to drink wine
again, till I grow old, and want it.' BOSWELL. 'I think, Sir, you once
said to me, that not to drink wine was a great deduction from life.'
JOHNSON. 'It is a diminution of pleasure, to be sure; but I do not say
a diminution of happiness. There is more happiness in being rational.'
BOSWELL. 'But if we could have pleasure always, should not we be
happy? The greatest part of men would compound for pleasure.' JOHNSON.
'Supposing we could have pleasure always, an intellectual man would not
compound for it. The greatest part of men would compound, because the
greatest part of men are gross.'

I mentioned to him that I had become very weary in a company where I
heard not a single intellectual sentence, except that 'a man who had
been settled ten years in Minorca was become a much inferiour man to
what he was in London, because a man's mind grows narrow in a narrow
place.' JOHNSON. 'A man's mind grows narrow in a narrow place, whose
mind is enlarged only because he has lived in a large place: but what is
got by books and thinking is preserved in a narrow place as well as in
a large place. A man cannot know modes of life as well in Minorca as in
London; but he may study mathematicks as well in Minorca.' BOSWELL. 'I
don't know, Sir: if you had remained ten years in the Isle of Col, you
would not have been the man that you now are.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, if I
had been there from fifteen to twenty-five; but not if from twenty-five
to thirty-five.' BOSWELL. 'I own, Sir, the spirits which I have in
London make me do every thing with more readiness and vigour. I can talk
twice as much in London as any where else.'

Of Goldsmith he said, 'He was not an agreeable companion, for he talked
always for fame. A man who does so never can be pleasing. The man who
talks to unburthen his mind is the man to delight you. An eminent
friend of ours is not so agreeable as the variety of his knowledge would
otherwise make him, because he talks partly from ostentation.'

Soon after our arrival at Thrale's, I heard one of the maids calling
eagerly on another, to go to Dr. Johnson. I wondered what this could
mean. I afterwards learnt, that it was to give her a Bible, which he had
brought from London as a present to her.

He was for a considerable time occupied in reading Memoires de
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