Johnson -christiansquoting.org.uk

Johnson to be sure has a roughness in his manner; but no man alive has a more tender heart. He has nothing of the bear but his skin.-
Oliver Goldsmith, in Boswell's _Life of Johnson_

True, (answered the Earl, with a smile) but he would have been a DANCING bear. ~Boswell, Life of Johnson

You must not mind me, madam; I say strange things, but I mean no harm. -- Dr. Johnson, in Fanny Burney, diary 23 August 1778

I am delighted to hear that you have taken to Johnson. Yes, isn't it a magnificent style--the very essence of manliness and condensation. . . . I personally get more pleasure from the Rambler than from anything else of his and at one time I used to read a Rambler every evening as a nightcap. --Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) _The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves_ [1986], "22 June 1930"

But the great Dr. Johnson was one in a century, and I count myself honored to have tasted the wine of his speech, even though put to my mouth through the goodness of his friend. For that Englishman is not to be read with the eyes alone, but read out, as with the Word, with a good voice, and a rolling of the tongue, so that the rich taste of magnificent English may come to the ears and go to the head, like the perfumes of the Magi, or like the best of beer, home brewed and long in the cask.--Richard Llewellyn, _How Green Was My Valley_ (1940), ch. 27

I can read every word that Dr. Johnson wrote with delight, for he had good sense, charm, and wit. No one could have written better if he had not wilfully set himself to write in the grand style. He knew good English when he saw it. --William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) _The Summing Up_ [1938], Chapter XII

A writer of gigantick fame in these days of little men.-- Thomas Sheridan, _ Life of Swift_

Of those who have thus survived themselves most completely, left a sort of personal seduction behind them in the world, and retained, after death, the art of making friends, Montaigne and Samuel Johnson certainly stand first.-- Robert Louis Stevenson, _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_