Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content. No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of the spring: no man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source and from the mouth of the Nile.
Interpretation
Value the present and make choices wisely without longing for what you can't have.
This quote emphasizes the importance of appreciating the present and making conscious choices about what blessings to embrace. Samuel Johnson illustrates that one cannot enjoy the fruits of a season while being obsessed with another; hence, it advises against distraction and encourages contentment with one's current situation and decisions.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a self-help seminar to encourage attendees to focus on their current opportunities.
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.
Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.
Human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth.
Light the incense! You have to burn to be fragrant.
Intuition (is) perception via the unconscious
I cannot convert men; I can only proclaim the Gospel
We have nothing to lose by trusting the infinite power of the Self, except the bondage of our own ignorance.
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