The friendship which is to be practised or expected by common mortals, must take its rise from mutual pleasure, and must end when the power ceases of delighting each other.
Interpretation
True friendship is based on mutual enjoyment and can fade when that pleasure is gone.
Samuel Johnson's quote reflects the idea that friendships among ordinary people often stem from shared enjoyment and mutual interests. When the joy derived from the relationship diminishes, so too can the bond, highlighting the transient nature of many friendships that rely on the capacity to delight and support one another.
In practice
During a speech about the importance of relationships, one might reference this quote to emphasize the need for shared joy in friendships.
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.
Friendship is the only point in human affairs concerning the benefit of which all, with one voice, agree.
I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend.
Ordinary imperfect people, always choose similarly imperfect people as friends.
Too few rejoice at a friend's good fortune.
Since we don't know where we're going, we have to stick together in case someone gets there.
Your loss we count as our loss. Your struggle we take as our struggle.
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