He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.
Interpretation
The wise choose to remain with the known rather than risk everything for something uncertain.
This quote by Samuel Johnson emphasizes the importance of prudence and rational decision-making. It suggests that a truly wise person evaluates the risks of abandoning a certain situation for the allure of an uncertain opportunity, advocating for a careful consideration of the potential consequences before making significant life choices.
In practice
In a graduation speech, one might use this quote to encourage graduates to make wise life choices.
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.
If the reason I give is a good one, you will act upon it. If it is a bad one I cannot make it better by piling epithet upon epithet. There is no logic in abuse; there is no argument in an epithet.
Your words and thoughts have physical power.
Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings and strictly honest, who complained of hard luck. A good character, good habits and iron industry are impregnable to the assaults of all ill-luck that fools ever dreamed.
When you find that people are not telling you the truth---look out!
I don't care about age very much. I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.
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