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About this quote

What does it mean?
Vice is simpler because it avoids long-term consequences and effort.
In plain terms
Doing wrong is easier than doing right.
What can you take from it?
Choose virtue despite the extra effort it requires.

Where it applies

  • ethical decisions
  • self-control
  • moral reasoning

Putting it to work

  • practice delayed gratification
  • accept moral costs

Questions to consider

  • Why does right feel hard?
  • When is short-term ease costly?

Another view

Sometimes vice feels easier only due to immediate comfort.

More from Samuel Johnson

  1. I have, all my life long, been lying till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do …

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

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  3. 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 ... A m…

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