Note 258 — SATURDAY, AUGUST 31.
Reading edition
In the Rambler, No. 98, entitled The Necessity of Cultivating Politeness, Johnson says:—'The universal axiom in which all complaisance is included, and from which flow all the formalities which custom has established in civilized nations, is, That no man shall give any preference to himself.' In the same paper, he says that 'unnecessarily to obtrude unpleasing ideas is a species of oppression.'