The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality.
Interpretation
Traveling helps us balance our dreams with what is real.
Samuel Johnson's quote suggests that travel serves as a means of grounding our imaginative experiences with the realities of the world. Through travel, we gain insights and knowledge that help temper our fantasies and aspirations, allowing us to see the world as it truly is and inspiring us to align our visions with what is attainable.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of cultural exposure, one might quote this saying to emphasize how travel shapes our perceptions.
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.
You've got to love what's lovable, and hate what's hateable. It takes brains to see the difference.
If you take care of the small things, the big things take care of themselves. You can gain more control over your life by paying closer attention to the little things.
The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.
Truth is something which you must see immediately β and to see something clearly you must give your heart and your mind and your whole being to it immediately.
Imaginary obstacles are insurmountable. Real ones aren't. But you can't tell the difference when you have no real information. Fear can create even more imaginary obstacles than ignorance can. That's why the smallest step away from speculation and into reality can be an amazing relief...The Reality Solution means: Do it before you're ready.
It is no judgement of a thing outside yourself to say it makes you ill. The wise reader knows that every pronouncement is, to some degree, an act of self-exposure; the book you find too challenging might only show how ill-equipped you are to face its challenge.
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