Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
Interpretation
Life is a journey of seeking desires rather than simply experiencing pleasure.
This quote by Samuel Johnson highlights the idea that human existence is characterized more by the pursuit of wants and desires than by the moments of enjoyment that may accompany the fulfillment of those wants. It suggests that life consists of a continuous striving for new goals and aspirations, indicating that the process of wanting is an inherent part of the human experience.
In practice
In a motivational speech discussing the importance of setting goals.
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.
But the present world is also designed for something which has not yet happened. It is like a violin waiting to be played: beautiful to look at, graceful to hold - and yet if you'd never heard one in the hands of a musician, you wouldn't believe the new dimensions of beauty yet to be revealed.
Nuclear disarmament is one of the greatest legacies we can pass on to future generations.
A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified.
All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
Politicians - power itself - are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power.
Be it or be it not true that Man is shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, it is unquestionably true that Government is begotten of aggression, and by aggression.
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