Friday, November 03, 2006
Bozzy's Blues
Samuel Johnson, letter to James Boswell, quoted by W. Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977), p. 552:
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You are always complaining of melancholy, and I conclude from those complaints that you are fond of it. No man talks of that which he is desirous to conceal, and every man desires to conceal that of which he is ashamed .... Make it an invariable and obligatory law to yourself, never to mention your own mental diseases; if you are never to speak of them, you will think of them but little, and if you think little of them, they will molest you rarely. When you talk of them, it is plain that you want either praise or pity; for praise there is no room, and pity will do you no good.
