“Pleasure of itself is not a vice.”
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer
April 15, 1778
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III
“The fallacy of that book is, that Mandeville defines neither vices nor benefits. He reckons among vices everything that gives pleasure. He takes the narrowest system of morality, monastick morality, which holds pleasure itself to be a vice, such as eating salt with our fish, because it makes it taste better; and he reckons wealth as a publick benefit, which is by no means always true. Pleasure of itself is not a vice.”
Dr. Johnson in conversation, April 15, 1778, reported in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1791) p. 948.
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Bernard Mandeville35
Anglo-Dutch writer and physician 1670–1733Related quotes
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