Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is t...ruly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At a tender age, I commandeered half a quire of foolscap from my father's desk and sat down to write a book. ...I had observed on ...printed fly leaves the words "By the author of, etc." ...So under the title of my prospective work I wrote: By the author of "Les Miserables," "The Woman in White," "Dombey and Son," "Tom Brown's Schooldays" and "Our Life in the Highlands," the last-named being an opus of good Queen Victoria. I had not read all these works but they existed on our bookshelves, and I hoped to produce something worthy of comparison.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws. Now, once we observe that destruction i...s so useful to her that she absolutely cannot dispense with it ... from this moment onward the idea of annihilation which we attach to death ceases to be real ... what we call the end of the living animal is no longer a true finis, but a simple transformation, a transmutation of matter. According to these irrefutable principles, death is hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one existence into another.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Argument is conclusive ... but ... it does not remove doubt, so that the mind may rest in the sure knowledge of the truth, unless ...it finds it by the method of experiment.... For if any man who never saw fire proved by satisfactory arguments that fire burns ... his hearer's mind would never be satisfied, nor would he avoid the fire until he put his hand in it ... that he might learn by experiment what argument taught.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All science requires mathematics. The knowledge of mathematical things is almost innate in us.... This is the easiest of sciences,... a fact which is obvious in that no one's brain rejects it; for laymen and people who are utterly illiterate know how to count and reckon.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »