As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a shift in the speaker's expectations of people as they gain more understanding of humanity.
Samuel Johnson suggests that as one learns more about human nature and the imperfections that come with it, their standards for what constitutes a 'good man' become more lenient. This indicates a deeper acceptance of humanity's flaws and a recognition that goodness can take many forms.
In practice
In a discussion about human behavior during a psychology class.
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 other animals humans eat, use in science, hunt, trap, and exploit in a variety of ways, have a life of their own that is of importance to them apart from their utility to us. They are not only in the world, they are aware of it. What happens to them matters to them. Each has a life that fares better or worse for the one whose life it is.
You cannot attain to charity except through humility.
There's a metaphor Vincent Eades likes to use: "If you examine a butterfly according to the laws of aerodynamics, it shouldn't be able to fly. But the butterfly doesn't know that, so it flies.
A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.
Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpation has been safely thrust into the political unconscious can sovereignty feel secure.
A man who has work that suits him and a wife, whom he loves, has squared his accounts with life.
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