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

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Source, in full

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.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Samuel Johnson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.