...it will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor.
Interpretation
Success in poetry does not always correlate with the effort put into it.
This quote by Samuel Johnson highlights the idea that hard work does not guarantee success in creative pursuits, such as poetry. It suggests that talent, timing, and other external factors can also play significant roles in determining the level of success an artist achieves, illustrating the unpredictable nature of artistic careers.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the unpredictability of success in the arts.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
All progress depends upon the unreasonable person.
Eight years of work can be copied in six months. It wasn't inevitable that it was going to work. A stolen design is stolen time.
More important than the HOW we achieve financial freedom, is the WHY. Find YOUR reasons why you want to be free and wealthy.
Ability is a poor man's wealth.
Good players create opportunities. The great players and the great people seize them
As it happened, all three of us turned out to be real writers--a coincidence almost too large to be termed mere coincidence in a society where literally tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of college students aspire to the writer's trade and where bare hundreds actually break through.
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