It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy unenvied, to be healthful without physic, and secure without a guard; to obtain from the bounty of nature, what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of artists and attendants, of flatterers and spies.
Interpretation
Poverty can bring a unique happiness free from envy and complications that wealth often entails.
In this quote, Samuel Johnson reflects on the unexpected advantages of poverty, suggesting that those who are poor can experience a simplicity of joy that wealthy individuals often lack. He implies that wealth brings complications such as envy, the need for constant protection, and dependence on others to maintain their lifestyle, while those who are poor can find happiness and security directly from nature without the encumbrances of wealth.
In practice
This quote could be shared at a charity event to highlight the value of happiness beyond material wealth.
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.
Happiness is a great power of holiness. Thus, kind words, by their power of producing happiness, have also a power of producing holiness, and so of winning men to God.
True happiness is to rejoice in the truth, for to rejoice in the truth is to rejoice in You, O God, who are the truth... Those who think that there is another kind of happiness look for joy elsewhere, but theirs is not true joy.
A passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young.
Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.
It is the pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.
There is no such thing as a perfectly happy or perfectly unhappy man in the world. One has more happiness in his life and another more unhappiness, and the same circumstance may produce widely different effects on individuals of different temperaments.
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