Vulgar words in Dr. Johnson and His Circle (Page 1)
This book at a glance
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~ ~ ~ Sentence 21 ~ ~ ~
When they recognize themselves in the national literature, it is not Hamlet, or Lear, or Clarissa, or Ravenswood that holds up the mirror; but Falstaff, or The Bastard, or Tom Jones, or Jeanie Deans, or perhaps Gabriel Oak: plain people, all of them, whatever their differences, with a certain quiet and downright quality which Englishmen are apt to think the peculiar birthright of the people of this island.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 943 ~ ~ ~
And older persons, not yet altogether regenerate, are apt to have a weakness for a man who was willing to be knocked up at three in the morning by some young roysterers, and turn out with them for a "frisk" about the streets and taverns and down the river in a boat.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,008 ~ ~ ~
It takes one's breath away at first to find the grave moralist of _The Rambler_ coolly saying to Mrs. Thrale and Fanny Burney, "Oh, I loved Bet Flint!" just after he had frankly explained to them that that lady was "habitually a slut and a drunkard and occasionally a thief and a harlot."
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,010 ~ ~ ~
He had, in fact, got below the perhaps superficial slut and harlot to the aboriginal human being, and that once arrived at he never forgot it.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,352 ~ ~ ~
Some of his most characteristic utterances owe their flavour to combining the language of the schools with the language of the tavern: as when he said of that strange inmate of his house, Miss Carmichael, "Poll is a stupid slut.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,736 ~ ~ ~
More than any other of his works it was written to please himself: he did so much more than he was paid to do that he almost refuted his own doctrine that no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.