Quote of the Day (Johnson, quoted by James Boswell)

“Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.”—Dr. Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1786)

(On this date in 1773, English literary lion Johnson and his younger Scottish friend Boswell embarked on a seven-week tour of northeast and northwest Scotland plus several of the islands in the Inner Hebrides. To me, this grand tour is all the more surprising given Johnson’s dislike for Scotland! Johnson’s account, A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland, published only two years after the trip, was derived largely from memory; Boswell’s, finished in 1786, was based on his contemporaneous notes. It's a forerunner of the epic life of Johnson, in all his quirky, brilliant humanity, that, when it appeared five years later, would revolutionize the art of biographies.)