Life is a journey that must be traveled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.
Oliver GoldsmithRead
In my time, the follies of the town crept slowly among us, but now they travel faster than a stagecoach.
Interpretation
Society's mistakes and foolish behaviors spread more quickly now than in the past.
Oliver Goldsmith reflects on the rapid pace at which negative influences and foolishness circulate in society compared to his own time. He observes that while past follies took time to permeate, today they spread swiftly, suggesting a critique of modernity and the changes in social dynamics.
In practice
During a speech on the impact of social media, one could use this quote to emphasize how quickly misinformation spreads today.
Life is a journey that must be traveled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.
A mind too vigorous and active, serves only to consume the body to which it is joined.
Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.
Whatever the skill of any country may be in the sciences, it is from its excellence in polite learning alone that it must expect a character from posterity.
Life at the greatest and best is but a froward child, that must be humored and coaxed a little till it falls asleep, and then all the care is over.
Hope, like the gleaming taper's light,_x000D_ _x000D_ Adorns and cheers our way;_x000D_ _x000D_ And still, as darker grows the night,_x000D_ _x000D_ Emits a brighter ray.
My generation was the turning point. Women older than us didn't expect to have jobs or careers; those younger did. But we were where it was changing - which is interesting but uncomfortable.
The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change.
People feel like the system is rigged against them, and here is the painful part, they're right. The system is rigged.
The speed of change today is faster than the human psyche seems able to handle, and it's increasingly difficult to reconcile the rhythms of our personal lives with the rapidity of a twenty-four-hour news cycle.
You have had many sadnesses, large ones, which passed. ... But please, ask yourself whether these large sadnesses haven't rather gone right through you [that is, passed through you]. Perhaps many things inside you have been transformed; perhaps somewhere, someplace deep inside your being, you have undergone important changes while you were sad.
Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.
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