Samuel Johnson Quotes
Sir, I have no objection to a man's drinking wine, if he can do it in moderation. I found myself apt to go to excess in it, and therefore, after having been for some time without it, on account of illness, I thought it better not to return to it. Every man is to judge for himself, according to the effects which he experiences.
Boswell, James. The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Vol. 2, Charles Dilly, 1791, p. 120.
This pledge was taken by over half a million Americans in Mathew's 1849-1851 tour of the United States promoting the Teetotal Abstinence Society.
In 1931 prohibition was a major political issue. Mayor William Hale Thompson organized campaign parades complete with circus animals. A camel carried the following sign.
Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini. Early in his career, as Secretary to the Emperor, he was assigned to oversee the education of the young king of Bohemia. Piccolomini’s advice of temperance was not at all based on theological reasons as drinking was rampant, even among the clergy. Also, he recognized the major effect of peer pressure on teenagers as it affects drinking behavior.
Most people only know about Garrison’s abolition crusade. However he had others like temperance.
Samuel Johnson, often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. Religiously, he was a devout Anglican, and politically a committed Tory. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes Johnson as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is the subject of James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, described by Walter Jackson Bate as "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature".
