138. Edmund Burke
Johnson: "Never believe extraordinary characters which
you hear of people. Depend upon it, Sir, 
they are exaggerated.
You do not see one man shoot a great deal higher than another."
I mentioned Mr. Burke. Johnson: "Yes, Burke is an
extraordinary man. His stream of mind is perpetual." ...and
once, when Johnson was ill, and unable to exert himself as much
as usual without fatigue, Mr. Burke having been mentioned, he
said, "That fellow calls forth all my powers. Were I to see
Burke now it would kill me."
Boswell: Life
Link
172. Edmund Burke
"You could not stand five minutes with that man beneath a shed
while it rained, but you must be convinced you had been standing
with the greatest man you had ever yet seen."
Piozzi: Anecdotes
Link
216. Edmund Burke; Convictions;
Sophistry
Of a person [Burke] who differed from him in politicks, he said,
"In private life he is a very honest gentleman; but I will not
allow him to be so in publick life. People may be honest,
though they are doing wrong; that is between their Maker and
them. But we, who are suffering by their pernicious
conduct, are to destroy them. We are sure that ------ [Burke]
acts from interest. We know what his genuine principles were.
They who allow their passions to confound the distinctions
between right and wrong, are criminal. They may be convinced;
but they have not come honestly by their conviction."
Boswell: Life
Link
322. Edmund Burke
We talked of Mr. Burke. Dr. Johnson said, he had a great variety
of knowledge, store of imagery, copiousness of language.
Robertson: "He has wit too." Johnson: "No, Sir;
he never succeeds there. 'Tis low; 'tis conceit. I used to
say, Burke never once made a good joke. What I most envy Burke
for, is, his being constantly the same. He is never what we call
humdrum; never unwilling to begin to talk, nor in haste to leave
off." Boswell: "Yet he can listen." Johnson:
"No; I cannot say he is good at that. So desirous is he to
talk, that, if one is speaking at this end of the table, he'll
speak to somebody at the other end. Burke, Sir, is such a man,
that if you met him for the first time in the street where you
were stopped by a drove of oxen, and you and he stepped aside to
take shelter for five minutes, he'd talk to you in such a manner,
that, when you parted, you would say, this is an extraordinary
man."
Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Link
323. Edmund Burke; Politics
Dr. Johnson now said, a certain eminent political friend of ours
[Burke] was wrong, in his maxim of sticking to a certain
set of men on all occasions. "I can see that a man may do
right to stick to a party," said he; "that is to say, he
is a Whig, or he is a Tory, and he thinks one of
those parties upon the whole the best, and that to make it
prevail, it must be generally supported, though, in particulars,
it may be wrong. He takes its faggot of principles, in which
there are fewer rotten sticks than in the other, though some
rotten sticks to be sure; and they cannot be well separated.
But, to blind one's self to one man, or one set of men (who may
be right to-day and wrong to-morrow), without any general
preference of system, I must disapprove."
Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Link
