If one was to think constantly of death, the business of life would stand still
Interpretation
Being overly focused on death can prevent us from living our lives to the fullest.
This quote by Samuel Johnson suggests that an incessant preoccupation with death can hinder our ability to engage with and appreciate life. If we are constantly fixated on mortality, we risk stagnating in our growth, experiences, and pursuits, ultimately missing out on the rich opportunities that life presents. It serves as a reminder to find a balance between acknowledging the reality of death while not allowing it to overshadow our living experience.
In practice
A motivational speaker discussing the importance of living in the moment during a seminar.
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 desert could not be claimed or owned β it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names before Canterbury existed, long before battles and treaties quilted Europe and the East ... All of us, even those with European homes and children in the distance, wished to remove the clothing of our countries. It was a place of faith. We disappeared into landscape.
It is among the evils of slavery that it taints the very sources of moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice: for what can be more false and heartless than this doctrine which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity to depend upon the color of the skin?
Sometimes breaking the rules is extending the rules.
There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes oneβs head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other peopleβs pain.
Asking people for money is giving them the opportunity to put their resources at the disposal of the Kingdom.
Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.
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