“I esteem biography, as giving us what comes near to ourselves, what we can turn to use.”

Valuing biography for practical insight into recognisable human lives · Boswell, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

• Memory
• Truth

“Characters should never be given by an historian, unless he knew the people whom he describes, or copies from those who knew them.”

Demanding first-hand knowledge or reliable testimony in biographical judgement · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Memory
• Truth

“The true art of memory is the art of attention.”

Linking memory less to tricks than to disciplined attention · Idler No. 74

• Knowledge
• Memory

“I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please, have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds.”

A sombre reflection on finishing a long work after the loss of those whose approval mattered · Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language

• Death
• Fame
• Memory

“No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.”

Seeing forgotten books as a reminder of how fragile literary fame can be · Rambler No. 106

• Fame
• Memory

“He that hopes to look back hereafter with satisfaction upon past years must learn to know the present value of single minutes.”

Making the wise use of small portions of time the basis of future satisfaction · Rambler No. 108

• Memory
• Time