Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.
Interpretation
Society reflects the collective choices of its individuals seeking the best possible quality of life.
In this quote, Samuel Johnson suggests that the quality and luxury of a society are determined by the choices and desires of its members. He implies that people will always strive to attain the highest standard of living available to them, indicating that luxury is relative and shaped by the social and economic conditions of the time.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about economic development to highlight how society's resources reflect individual aspirations.
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.
Psychoanalysis has a degree of unreliability about it. You will never know whether you've found the truth. You may find a subjective truth, but you don't know.
Consumer: A person who is capable of choosing a president but incapable of choosing a bicycle without help from a government agency.
Freeman denied the claim that he was a “man of God”, saying that “the question of faith is whatever you actually believe is. We take a lot of what we're talking about in science on faith; we posit a theory, and until it's dis-proven we have faith that it's true. If the mathematics work out, then it's true, until it's proven to be untrue.
I prefer unlucky things. Luck is vulgar. Who wants what luck would bring? I don't.
As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.
Comrades," he said, "here is a point that must be settled. The wild creatures, such as rats and rabbits–are they our friends or our enemies? Let us put it to the vote. I propose this question to the meeting: Are rats comrades?" The vote was taken at once, and it was agreed by an overwhelming majority that rats were comrades. There were only four dissentients, the three dogs and the cat, who was afterwards discovered to have voted on both sides.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.