“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”

— Samuel Johnson

Quoted in "Anecdotes of the Revd. Percival Stockdale" (1809) in Johnsonian Miscellanies (1897), vol. II, p. 333, edited by George Birkbeck Hill; also quoted in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, in the Avenged Sevenfold song "Bat Country", and in Kingdom S02E04.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." by Samuel Johnson?

Samuel Johnson photo

Samuel Johnson362

English writer 1709–1784

Related quotes

“He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

“A beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast, the less he knows it.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

“Surely the glory of finally getting rid of and burying a long and troublesome matter should be as great as that of making an important discovery. The trouble is that the coverer is like Samson who perished in the wreck of what he had destroyed; if he gets rid of a thing effectually he gets rid of himself too.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

The Art of Covery
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XI - Cash and Credit

“Whatever pain you can't get rid of, make it your creative offering.”

Susan Cain book Bittersweet

Bittersweet, Chapter 3 at p. 56

“The Saint is a man who disciplines his ego. The Sage is a man who rids himself of his ego.”

Wei Wu Wei (1895–1986) writer

Fingers Pointing Towards The Moon (1958)

“The great man is the man who can get himself made and who will get himself made out of anything he finds at hand.”

Gerald Stanley Lee (1862–1944) Americna minister

Book II, Chapter XV.
Crowds (1913)

“A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failures certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

“No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

March 1759, p. 97
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

“If man puts his honor first in relying upon himself, knowing himself and applying himself, this in self-reliance, self-assertion, and freedom, he then strives to rid himself of the ignorance which makes a strange impenetrable object a barrier and a hindrance to his self-knowledge.”

Max Stirner book The False Principle of our Education

Source: The False Principle of our Education (1842), p. 23

“The violence of beast on beast is read
As natural law, but upright man
Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.”

Derek Walcott (1930–2017) Saint Lucian–Trinidadian poet and playwright

"A Far Cry from Africa" (1962)

Related topics