Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the value of easily accessible knowledge and the practical use of books.
Samuel Johnson suggests that the most useful books are those that we can easily access and refer to when needed, just like books we choose to carry with us to a fire. This notion highlights the importance of having practical knowledge at our fingertips, making it more applicable in our everyday lives than more complex or distant concepts.
In practice
In a motivational speech about lifelong learning, to emphasize the importance of accessible knowledge.
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.
Every time I've flown an aircraft, or visited a steelworks, or watched a panel-beater at work, I've learned something new that can be applied to buildings.
I grew up to be indifferent to the distinction between literature and science, which in my teens were simply two languages for experience that I learned together.
After two years at UCLA, I decided to leave. I was convinced that no amount of education would help a black man get a job.
I like to read things I've read before. It's like listening over and over to your favorite song.
Far from creating independent thinkers, schools have always, throughout history, played an institutional role in a system of control and coercion. And once you are well educated you have already been socialized in ways that support the power structure, which, in turn, rewards you immensely.
The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.
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