All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that actions or judgments that do not contribute to positive outcomes or deter negative ones are pointless.
In this quote, Samuel Johnson reflects on the nature of severity, arguing that it should serve a purpose. If severity does not lead to an increase in goodness or the prevention of evil, it is considered idle or meaningless. This implies that both actions and attitudes should aim toward fostering positive change or mitigating harm, promoting a more purposeful approach to how we engage with the world and its challenges.
In practice
This quote can be powerful in discussions about ethical leadership.
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.
Taxes are what we pay for civilized society
The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.
We must reckon with the possibility that something in the nature of the sexual instinct itself is unfavorable to the realization of complete satisfaction.
The process of translating comprises in its essence the whole secret of human understanding of the world and of social communication.
In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.
My work with AIDS patients started right at the beginning of the epidemic, totally unplanned and spontaneous, as all my work had proceeded in the previous two decades, if it were not already my whole life-style! In the early eighties, we knew very little about this peculiar disease.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.