Other related topics at:
Virtue and Vice
116. Admiration; Friendship; Judgement;
Love
I regretted that I had lost much of my disposition to admire,
which people generally do as they advance in life.
Johnson: "Sir, as a man advances in life, he gets what is
better than admiration, --judgement, to estimate things at their
true value." I still insisted that admiration was more pleasing
than judgement, as love is more pleasing than friendship. The
feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled
with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.
Johnson: "No, Sir, admiration and love are like being
intoxicated with champagne; judgement and friendship like being
enlivened."
Boswell: Life
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980. Conviviality; Love; Society
"A wise and good man is never so amiable as in his unbended and
familiar intervals. Heroic generosity or philosophical
discoveries may compel veneration and respect, but love always
implies some kind of natural or voluntary equality, and is only
to be excited by that levity and cheerfulness which disencumbers
all minds from awe and solicitude, invites the modest to freedom,
and exalts the timorous to confidence. This easy gaiety is
certain to please, whatever the character of him that exerts it;
if our superiors descend from their elevation, we love them for
lessening the distance at which we are placed below them; and
inferiors, from whom we can receive no lasting advantage, will
always keep our affections while their sprightliness and mirth
contribute to our pleasure."
Johnson: Rambler #89 (January 22, 1751)
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1,013. Love; Society
"To love all men is our duty, so far as it includes a general
habit of benevolence, and readiness of occasional kindness; but
to love all is equally impossible; at least impossible without
the extinction of those passions which now produce all our pains
and all our pleasures: without the disuse, if not the abolition
of some of our faculties, and the suppression of all of our hopes
and fears in apathy and indifference."
Johnson: Rambler #99 (February 26, 1751)
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1,290. Love
"It is not hard to love those from whom nothing can be
feared."
Johnson: Addison (Lives of the Poets)
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1,439. Admiration; Conviviality;
Love
"It is always necessary to be loved, but not always necessary to
be reverenced."
Johnson: Rambler #188 (January 4, 1752)
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1,686. Love
"I know not whether it is the interest
of the husband to solicit
very earnestly a place on the bracelet. If his image be not in
the heart, it is of small avail to hang it on the hand. A husband
encircled with diamonds and rubies may gain some esteem, but will
never excite love. He that thinks himself most secure of his
wife, should be fearful of persecuting her continually with his
presence. The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires
to be rekindled by intervals of absence; and Fidelity herself
will be wearied with transferring her eye only from the same man
to the same picture."
Johnson: Idler #39 (January 13, 1759)
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