Daily Inspiration Quote by James Boswell

Boswell is doing something sly here: he’s defending the pun while also putting it firmly in its place. “May be admitted” sounds like a doorman’s verdict, not a standing ovation. The phrasing frames wit as a social institution with rules, hierarchies, and gatekeepers, which is exactly the world Boswell moved through and documented. In 18th-century British polite society, conversation wasn’t just talk; it was performance, reputation management, a kind of salon sport. A pun, then, is less a burst of creativity than a calculated risk: it can signal quickness, but it can also look like cheap showmanship.

Calling puns “smaller excellencies” is classic Boswellian calibration. He grants them value, but not too much. The subtext is anxious about taste. A pun is permissible when it’s “good,” which implies scarcity and discernment, and when it serves “lively conversation,” not when it derails it. That “lively” matters: the goal is social energy, not linguistic virtuosity for its own sake. Boswell, as a lawyer, would be acutely aware of language’s double life - how a word can mean two things, how ambiguity can charm or mislead. He’s basically arguing for wordplay as seasoning, not as the meal.

Contextually, Boswell’s generation also inherited a lingering suspicion of punning as low humor, a parlor trick associated with the unserious. His sentence operates like a peace treaty between refined restraint and human delight: yes, enjoy the pun, but don’t mistake it for genius. The joke gets a visa, not citizenship.