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Who really said it

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain

Written by Samuel Johnson 1709–1784 · English essayist, critic & lexicographer
Verified Free to reuse

Genuinely Johnson, and genuinely word-for-word. He wrote it in The Rambler No. 185, published 24 December 1751 — an essay arguing that revenge is not worth what it costs the avenger. The sentence survives unaltered in period printings: the eleventh edition of 1789 ↗ sets it in long-s type as “A wiſe man will make haſte to forgive…”

Last verified 4 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain” Samuel Johnson, The Rambler No. 185, 24 December 1751 — verbatim; confirmed in the eleventh edition, vol. 4 (1789)

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Provenance

The Rambler, No. 185

Work
The Rambler, No. 185
Published
24 December 1751
Essay title
The prohibition of revenge justifiable by reason. The meanness of regulating our conduct by the opinions of men.
Author
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

It is easiest to forgive, while there is yet little to be forgiven. A single injury may be soon dismissed from the memory; but a long succession of ill offices by degrees associates itself with every idea; a long contest involves so many circumstances, that every place and action will recall it to the mind, and fresh remembrance of vexation must still enkindle rage, and irritate revenge. A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain. He that willingly suffers the corrosions of inveterate hatred, and gives up his days and nights to the gloom of malice, and perturbations of stratagem, cannot surely be said to consult his ease. Rambler No. 185

The line sits in the middle of Johnson’s argument, not at the end of it — the sentences on either side are what make the point practical rather than pious.

Scanned period edition, 1789
The Rambler, eleventh edition, vol. 4 (1789), at the Internet Archive
Read The Rambler No. 185 in full

How we verified it

  • The sentence is Johnson’s own and appears word for word in The Rambler No. 185 — the full essay ↗ carries it in the paragraph beginning “It is easiest to forgive, while there is yet little to be forgiven.”
  • The essay is dated 24 December 1751 and titled “The prohibition of revenge justifiable by reason…” — a second, independent transcription ↗ gives the same number, the same date and the same wording, and a Johnson quotation index ↗ dates Rambler No. 185 to December 24, 1751 as well.
  • It is not a modern smoothing of an older text. The eleventh edition of 1789, vol. 4 ↗ prints it with the period long s — “A wiſe man will make haſte to forgive, becauſe he knows the true value of time” — on a page whose running head reads N 185.
  • The essay number and title check out in the collected editions too: the 1825 Works of Samuel Johnson, Rambler vol. II ↗ lists No. 185 under exactly that title in its contents.
  • One honest caveat about the paper trail: Wikiquote’s Samuel Johnson page ↗ does not list this sentence at all, and Quote Investigator has no article on it. Nobody has indexed it — which is why the primary text, not a secondary investigation, is the anchor here.
Public domain

The Rambler No. 185 was first published on 24 December 1751 and was reprinted in collected editions throughout Johnson’s lifetime, including the eleventh edition of 1789 ↗. A work first published in 1751 is far outside any term of copyright in the United States, so the sentence and the essay around it are in the public domain. The quote is in Johnson’s original English, so no translation rights are involved.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

The problem isn’t the author — it’s the missing source

For once the famous name is the right one. What goes missing is everything that would let you check it: this is one of the most-reprinted sentences on the quote sites, and almost none of them will tell you it came from a numbered essay about revenge.

BrainyQuote no source at all

Its page for the line ↗ gives Johnson’s name and his birth and death dates, and nothing else — no work, no essay number, no date.

Goodreads user-submitted

The Goodreads entry ↗ carries the sentence under Johnson’s name with no book, essay number or date attached.

AZQuotes opaque citation

AZQuotes ↗ does better than most, pointing to The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (ed. Arthur Murphy, 1837), p. 278 — but it never names the essay, so the citation sends you to a page number in a collected edition rather than to Rambler No. 185.

The quote sites, collectively wording intact

Unusually for a much-shared line, this one has not drifted. BrainyQuote, Goodreads and AZQuotes all print it exactly as Johnson wrote it, matching the 1789 edition ↗ apart from modernised spelling.

It is Johnson, and the words are his: The Rambler No. 185, published 24 December 1751 ↗, in an essay arguing that revenge costs the avenger more than the original injury ever did.

Context

Why it mattered

Johnson was nearly two years into The Rambler when he wrote this — 208 twice-weekly essays, produced while the Dictionary was still unfinished. No. 185 takes on revenge, and the argument is deliberately unsentimental. Johnson does not ask you to forgive because forgiveness is noble. He asks you to forgive because grudges are expensive.

The sentence lands as the practical clause in that case: time is the thing a resentful man spends without noticing. The next line in the essay itemises the bill — the man who nurses hatred, Johnson writes, “gives up his days and nights to the gloom of malice.”

Johnson’s case against revenge is not that it is wicked. It is that it wastes your afternoon.

How Johnson builds the argument

The essay opens with lines from Juvenal’s thirteenth satire on the sweetness of revenge, given in Dryden’s English — Johnson quotes the sentiment in order to take it apart. The full essay ↗ then argues that a ‘right’ of vengeance can never be settled fairly: whoever strikes back sets his own penalty, and the other party never agrees it was proportionate, so the account stays permanently open.

The forgiveness passage is the practical exit from that loop. Johnson’s point is about timing as much as mercy — a single injury is easily dismissed from memory, but a long quarrel attaches itself to “every place and action,” so that ordinary life keeps re-lighting the anger.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Wisdom Time Kindness

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

The Rambler No. 185 — full textjohnsonessays.com

The complete essay, with the sentence in its original paragraph.
Rambler No. 185 (December 24, 1751)ourcivilisation.com

A second full transcription, dated, with the Juvenal motto and Dryden's English.
The Rambler, eleventh edition, vol. 4 (1789)archive.org

Scanned period printing that carries the line in long-s type.
The Works of Samuel Johnson, vol. 3 (The Rambler II, 1825)gutenberg.org

Collected edition whose contents list names No. 185 by its full title.
Quotes on forgivenesssamueljohnson.com

A Johnson quotation index that dates Rambler No. 185 to December 24, 1751.
The Rambleren.wikipedia.org

The periodical: 208 essays, published Tuesdays and Saturdays, 1750–1752.

The author

Who was Samuel Johnson?

Samuel Johnson

1709–1784 · English essayist, critic and lexicographer

Samuel Johnson was the dominant English man of letters of his century — poet, critic, biographer, and the compiler of A Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755. Between 1750 and 1752 he wrote 208 essays for The Rambler, appearing twice a week while the Dictionary was still unfinished; No. 185 is one of them. A great deal of what circulates as ‘Dr Johnson’ is talk that James Boswell wrote down years later — this sentence is the other kind, Johnson writing for print.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Samuel Johnson, “No. 185: The prohibition of revenge justifiable by reason. The meanness of regulating our conduct by the opinions of men,” The Rambler, 24 December 1751; collected in The Rambler, 11th ed., vol. 4 (1789).

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