Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed; but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disciplined by an easy separation...to die is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.
Interpretation
Exercise can enhance the quality of life, but it cannot prevent death; rather, it helps us face mortality more gracefully.
Samuel Johnson reflects on the inevitability of death, suggesting that while exercise and a disciplined life cannot save us from our fate, they can make the journey more pleasant. He implies that accepting our mortality and striving for a fulfilling life are crucial to dying without regret and suffering, as it is often our fears and anxieties that lead to torment in the face of death.
In practice
During a health seminar, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of maintaining a good quality of life even when considering our mortality.
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.
The mill wheel turns, it turns forever, though what is uppermost remains not so.
Jesus comes among us, in our all division, not to instruct, comfort or inspire but to die. In doing so, He answers the sum of our self-regard, stupidity and cruelty.
Everything that touches YOUR life, must be an instrument of YOUR liberation or tossed into the trash cans of HISTORY
If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and ... if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own I would refuse... I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist.
God never talks. But the devil keeps advertising, Father. The devil does a lot of commercials.
In view of the tide of religiosity engulfing a once secular republic it is refreshing to be reminded by Freethinkers that free thought and skepticism are robustly in the American tradition. After all the Founding Fathers began by omitting God from the American Constitution.
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