A reader supplies more Johnsoniana:

Derb —
A few more Johnson quotes that could easily relate to the current campaign.
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little. We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us. Language is the dress of thought; every time you talk your mind is on parade. Hope is itself a species of happiness, and perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords. The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

[Me] The trouble with old Sam is, he’s too quotable. If you read him in early adulthood (in my case courtesy of Mona Wilson’s excellent Harvard selection, which I got for pennies at a library clearance sale, and have somehow held on to for close to forty years – may I have it buried with me, please?), and Boswell’s Life, and Mrs Thrale’s Anecdotes, then for the rest of your life pretty much anything brings a Johnson quote to mind. You have to keep swallowing them unless you want to become a Johnson bore. That man had a grasp on the human condition few have matched.

There is, of course, an anti-Johnson school. Macaulay’s essay, though affectionate overall, scored some hits; and don’t ever praise Johnson in Roger Scruton’s presence. I once did — see these scars.