Other related topics at:
Virtue and Vice
The Whole Truth
250. Accuracy
Next morning, while we were at breakfast, Johnson gave a very
earnest recommendation of what he himself practised with the
utmost conscientiousness: I mean a strict attention to truth,
even in the most minute particulars. "Accustom your children
(said he,) constantly to this; 
if a
thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say
that it happened at
another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them; you do
not know where deviation from truth will end." Boswell:
"It may come to the door: and when once an account is at all
varied in one circumstance, it may by degrees be varied so as to
be totally different from what really happened." Our lively
hostess [Hester Thrale], whose fancy was impatient of the rein,
fidgeted at this, and ventured to say, "Nay, this is too much.
If Mr. Johnson should forbid me to drink tea, I would comply, as
I should feel the restraint only twice a day; but little
variations in narrative must happen a thousand times a day, if
one is not perpetually watching." Johnson: "Well, Madam,
you ought to be perpetually watching. It is more from
carelessness about truth than from intentional lying, that there
is so much falsehood in the world."
Boswell: Life
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313. Accuracy
"Of the caution necessary in adjusting narratives there is no
end. Some tell what they do not know, that they may not seem
ignorant, and others from mere indifference about truth. All
truth is not, indeed, of equal importance; but, if little
violations are allowed, every violation will in time be thought
little; and a writer should keep himself vigilantly on his guard
against the first temptations to negligence or supineness."
Johnson: Letter to Dr. Charles Burney
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332. Accuracy; Writing
"I advised Chambers, and would advise every young man beginning
to compose, to do it as fast as he can, to get a habit of having
his mind to start promptly; it is so much more difficult to
improve in speed than in accuracy."
Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
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382. Accuracy; Travel Writing
"He who has not made the experiment, or who is not accustomed to
require rigorous accuracy from himself, will scarcely believe how
much a few hours take from certainty of knowledge, and
distinctness of imagery; how the succession of objects will be
broken, how separate parts will be confused, and how many
particular features and discriminations will be compressed and
conglobated into one gross and general idea.
To this dilatory notation must be imputed the false relations of
travellers, where there is no imaginable motive to deceive. They
trusted to memory, what cannot be trusted safely to the eye, and
told by guess what a few hours before they had known with
certainty."
Johnson: Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
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998. Accuracy; Writing
"In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be
sacrificed to conciseness."
Johnson: The Bravery of the English Common Soldier
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1,046. Accuracy; Imagination;
Painting
"To paint things as they are requires a minute attention, and
employs the memory rather than the fancy."
Johnson: Milton (Lives of the Poets)
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