Samuel Johnson zinger of the day; or, The more things change...

Been re-reading Boswell in the evenings the last week or so, and was reminded last night of the fact that there are some professions that in every time and place...oh, let's just pass on the story (the emphasis is original):

Much enquiry having been made concerning a gentleman, who had quitted a company where Johnson was, and no information being obtained; at last Johnson observed, that 'he did not care to speak ill of any man behind his back, but he believed the gentleman was an attorney.'

And, since the following line is on the same page, I'll quote it again even though it's one of the five or six lines that everybody who knows who Samuel Johnson was, has already heard:

A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately after his wife died: Johnson said, it was the triumph of hope over experience.

Which in turn reminds me of Ambrose Bierce's incomparable definition of love:

love, n.: A temporary insanity, curable by marriage.

But I should say, giving honor where it is due, that Sam Johnson is himself, like my parents, a sterling rebuke to Bierce's witticism, being a man who was happily married indeed. And therefore I provide one final observation from the Lexicographer:

When I [Boswell] censured a gentleman of my acquaintance for marrying a second time, as it shewed a disregard of his first wife, he said, "Not at all, Sir. On the contrary, were he not to marry again, it might be concluded that his first wife had given him a disgust to marriage; but by taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by shewing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time."

Hat tip:...[chuckling] Hey, not everything I run across is stolen from other people on the internet. Though my loyal readers by this time may be forgiven for thinking so.