Boswell's Life of Johnson (1791), 5 April 1776
Samuel Johnson
Johnson was a man who knew the grinding realities of a writer's life. This quip slices through romantic notions of the writer as a purely inspired soul. For him, writing was labor, and labor deserved compensation. In an era when many writers earned their keep through patronage or side professions, Johnson insisted that writing should stand as a vocation worthy of its own reward.