Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.
Interpretation
Curiosity and leisure can lead to significant knowledge, but distractions often get in the way.
This quote by Samuel Johnson highlights the importance of leisure and curiosity as essential drives for acquiring useful knowledge. However, he points out that these noble pursuits are frequently hindered by trivial tasks and competition that divert attention from the deeper explorations of knowledge and understanding.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of lifelong learning, one might quote this to emphasize the need for curiosity over trivial concerns.
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.
For a lot of us, awareness is merely realizing the extent to which we've been lied to all our lives. You start educating yourself. You become motivated; you follow your muse where it takes you. And you see the world in a different way. You start making decisions based on what you feel is right.
.. we shall not be properly educated ourselves, nor will the guardians whom we are training, until we can recognise the qualities of discipline, courage, generosity, greatness of mind, and others akin to them, as well as their opposites in all their manifestations.
How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!
I am not here to speak against the Taliban. I'm here to speak up for the right of every child.
Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors.
School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.
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