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Who really said it

Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people

Spoken by Samuel Johnson 1709–1784 · English lexicographer, essayist & literary critic
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Johnson said it aloud at Dunvegan on the Isle of Skye on Monday, 20 September 1773, after Boswell remarked that it was hard M’Leod should find ingratitude in so many of his people. James Boswell printed it in The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (London, 1785), pp. 283–84, where the sentence opens “Sir, gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation…” on p. 283 and runs over the page turn to finish on p. 284.

Last verified 4 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people” Samuel Johnson, spoken at Dunvegan, Isle of Skye, 20 September 1773 — recorded in James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (London: Henry Baldwin for Charles Dilly, 1785), pp. 283–84. Verbatim: “Sir, gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.”

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In context

Evoking the world of Samuel Johnson — English lexicographer, essayist & literary critic. Theme: "Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where the line actually appears

Work
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Recorded
Monday, 20 September 1773 — Dunvegan, Isle of Skye
First published
London, 1785 — printed by Henry Baldwin for Charles Dilly (pp. 283–84)
Recorded by
James Boswell (1740–1795)

I observed, it was hard that M’Leod should find ingratitude in so many of his people. JOHNSON. ‘Sir, gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.’ I doubt of this. Nature seems to have implanted gratitude in all living creatures. Dunvegan, Skye · 20 September 1773

Transcribed from the Project Gutenberg text of Boswell’s revised edition, with spelling modernised; the 1785 first edition reads the same in period orthography. Note the opening “Sir,” and Boswell’s immediate objection — both are cut from the version that circulates.

1785 first edition, scanned
Read the passage on pages 283–84
Full text of the Journal at Project Gutenberg

How we verified this

  • The 1785 London first edition ↗, printed by Henry Baldwin for Charles Dilly, carries the sentence across pages 283–84 in the entry for Monday, 20 September 1773: page 283 ends “you do not find” with the catchword “it”, and page 284 opens “it among gross people.”
  • Project Gutenberg’s text of the Journal ↗ gives the same reading, including the vocative: “Sir, gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.”
  • Boswell’s original manuscript journal, published by Pottle and Bennett ↗, records it too, punctuated with a full stop: “gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation. You do not find it among gross people.”
  • Wikiquote ↗ lists it among sourced Johnson quotations, citing the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785) and the date 20 September 1773 — matching the printed text.
Public domain

The sentence was first published in Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (London: Henry Baldwin for Charles Dilly, 1785), far earlier than the 1931 US public-domain cutoff, so Johnson’s words and Boswell’s surrounding narrative are both free of copyright. Modern critical and annotated editions carry their own editorial copyright, but the text quoted here follows the 1785 printing.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

The attribution is right — the sourcing usually isn’t

This one is genuine Johnson. What goes wrong is everything around it: the book it gets pinned to, the missing first word, and the impression that Johnson wrote it down himself.

Boswell’s Life of Johnson mis-sourced

A-Z Quotes cites it to “James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1786). ‘Boswell’s Life of Johnson: including Boswell’s Journal of a tour of the Hebrides…’, p.264” — a later combined volume. Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson was not published until 1791 ↗; the sentence belongs to the separate Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.

the vanished “Sir” trimmed

Boswell prints the reply as “Sir, gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.” The circulating version silently drops the vocative and capitalises “Gratitude” — a small trim, but it converts a retort into an aphorism. See the passage in the Journal ↗

“Johnson wrote” spoken, not written

Johnson never published this. It is talk, taken down by Boswell — and Boswell followed it in print with his own dissent, “I doubt of this. Nature seems to have implanted gratitude in all living creatures.” 1785 first edition, pp. 283–84 ↗

quote-image sites unsourced

Typical aggregator pages carry the line with the author’s name and nothing else — no work, no date, no page — which is how the wrong-book citations spread unchallenged. Example ↗

Johnson really said it — at Dunvegan on the Isle of Skye, Monday 20 September 1773, printed by Boswell in the 1785 first edition of the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, pages 283–84 ↗.

Context

A landlord’s complaint, and a biographer who disagreed

Johnson and Boswell were staying at Dunvegan, the house of the Laird of MacLeod, midway through their 1773 tour of the Hebrides. Over the morning’s talk Johnson had been urging MacLeod to raise his rents and put his idle retainers to productive work; Boswell then observed that it was hard MacLeod should find ingratitude in so many of his people. Johnson’s answer — gratitude is cultivated, not natural — lands as a maxim, but in context it is a landlord’s consolation delivered inside an argument about the collapse of Highland feudal loyalty.

What almost never travels with the quote is that Boswell immediately disagreed with it, in print, in the very next sentence — over the page turn, on p. 284. That dissent is why the line reads so differently in Boswell’s book than it does on a gratitude-journal graphic: it is one side of an argument, not a settled conclusion.

I doubt of this. Nature seems to have implanted gratitude in all living creatures.

The manuscript version differs slightly

Boswell’s private journal, published from the original manuscript by Frederick A. Pottle and Charles H. Bennett, carries the same sentence with a full stop instead of a semicolon: “Sir,” said he, “gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation. You do not find it among gross people.” The classical authority Boswell reached for next is not a manuscript-versus-print difference at all: the manuscript and the 1785 first edition agree, and both credit the lion mentioned by Valerius Maximus. Boswell corrected it to Aulus Gellius (Noctes Atticae V.14) only in the third edition of 1786 — as Pottle and Bennett note at the line, “Sic in the first edition, but changed to Aulus Gellius in the third, with a reference in a footnote: Aul. Gellius, Lib. v., c. xiv.”

The practical point for anyone quoting it: both the private notebook and the book Boswell published record the sentence, which is unusually strong evidence for an eighteenth-century remark reported in conversation.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Gratitude Character Growth

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (full text)gutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg’s free edition of Boswell’s Journal, in text, EPUB and HTML.
1785 first edition, scannedarchive.org

The London first edition printed by Henry Baldwin for Charles Dilly; the sentence runs over the page turn at pp. 283–84.
Boswell’s original manuscript journalarchive.org

Pottle and Bennett’s edition from the manuscript, where the line appears in slightly different punctuation.
Samuel Johnson — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Sourced Johnson quotations; lists this one under the Journal with the date 20 September 1773.
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebridesen.wikipedia.org

Background on the 1773 tour and the book’s 1785 publication.
The quote as aggregators cite itazquotes.com

An example of the common mis-sourcing to Boswell’s Life of Johnson rather than the Journal.

The true author

Who was Samuel Johnson?

Samuel Johnson

1709–1784 · English lexicographer, essayist & literary critic

Samuel Johnson was an English writer and polymath — poet, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer and, most famously, the compiler of A Dictionary of the English Language (1755). He is quoted more often for his talk than his writing, because James Boswell followed him with a notebook and published what he heard. In 1773 the two toured the Scottish Highlands and Hebrides together; Johnson wrote his own account, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, and Boswell wrote the conversational one that produced this line.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Boswell, James. The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. London: Printed by Henry Baldwin, for Charles Dilly, 1785, pp. 283–84 (entry for Monday, 20 September 1773).

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people’?” Last verified 4 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/gratitude-is-a-fruit-of-great-cultivation-you-do-not-find/

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