To hear complaints is wearisome alike to the wretched and the happy.
Interpretation
Listening to complaints can be tiring for everyone, regardless of their emotional state.
This quote by Samuel Johnson highlights the universal fatigue that comes with listening to complaints. Whether one is experiencing happiness or misery, the act of constantly hearing grievances from others can be burdensome and can detract from one's peace of mind. It serves as a reminder that while expressing discontent can be necessary, the act of complaining can weigh heavily on both the speaker and the listener.
In practice
In a team meeting, addressing the team's constant complaints can help reframe the discussion towards solutions.
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.
No single event can awaken within us a stranger whose existence we had never suspected. To live is to be slowly born.
To whatever degree he may have desacralized the world, the man who has made his choice in favor of a profane life never succeeds in completely doing away with religious behavior.
On the one hand, she is cut off from the protection awarded to her sisters abroad; on the other, she has no such power to defend her interests at the polls, as is the heritage of her brothers at home.
'Women's' war has its own colors, its own smells, its own lighting, and its own range of feelings. There are no heroes and incredible feats; there are simply people who are busy doing inhumanly human things.
She thought about her life and how lost sheβd felt for most of it. She thought about the way that all truths sheβd been taught to consider valuable invariably conflicted with the world as it was actually lived. How could a person be so utterly lost, yet remain living?
To catch the real meaning of the Spirit of Christmas, we need only drop the last syllable, and it becomes the Spirit of Christ.
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