[...] for the Doctor observed, that no man takes upon himself small blemishes without supposing that great abilities are attributed to him; and that, in short, this affectation of candour or modesty was but another kind of indirect self-praise, and had its foundation in vanity.

What can he mean by coming among us? He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dullness in others.

Johnson is dead. Let us go to the next best:-there is nobody; no man can be said to put you in mind of Johnson.

Then, all censure of a man's self is oblique praise.

Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it make us vain, in fact, of our modesty.

The deepest thing in any one is the conviction of the bad luck that follows boasting.

My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously and those who don't have the guts to sometimes say: I don…