A ship is worse than a gaol. There is, in a gaol, better air, better company, better conveniency of every kind; and a ship has the additional disadvantage of of being in danger.
Interpretation
This quote compares the confinement of a ship to that of a jail, highlighting the discomfort and dangers of being at sea.
Samuel Johnson contrasts the experience of being confined on a ship with that of being imprisoned in a jail, suggesting that a ship can be even more unbearable. He points out that in jail, one may find better facilities and companionship, while a ship is perilous and lacks comfort, emphasizing the grave discomfort that can come from being trapped in a confined space with the danger of the sea.
In practice
This quote can be used to illustrate the discomfort of travel in a motivational speech about overcoming challenges.
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.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.
But there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying.
If you take responsibility for what you are doing to yourself, how you produce your symptoms, how you produce your illness, how you produce your existence-the very moment you get in touch with yourself-growth begins, integration begins.
Air power is indivisible. If you split it up into compartments, you merely pull it to pieces and destroy its greatest asset - its flexibility.
I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.
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