To hear complaints is wearisome alike to the wretched and the happy.
Interpretation
Listening to complaints can be tiring for everyone, regardless of their emotional state.
This quote by Samuel Johnson highlights the universal fatigue that comes with listening to complaints. Whether one is experiencing happiness or misery, the act of constantly hearing grievances from others can be burdensome and can detract from one's peace of mind. It serves as a reminder that while expressing discontent can be necessary, the act of complaining can weigh heavily on both the speaker and the listener.
In practice
In a team meeting, addressing the team's constant complaints can help reframe the discussion towards solutions.
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.
It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music.
Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? Maybe I was just crazy. Maybe it was the 60's. Or maybe I was just a girl... interrupted.
A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!
One problem with globalisation is that bad ideas seem to travel faster than good ones; first there was smearing tomato ketchup on everything; then drinking sugar-soaked cocktails ('Cosmo'-politanism) instead of our traditional whisky soda, and now this idea that we should abandon the poor to their fate in order to protect their dignity.
That this individual life of all of us is not something limited in its temporal expression to the life that now we experience, follows from the very fact that here nothing final or individual is found expressed.
It's not about 'what can I accomplish?' but 'what do I want to accomplish?' Paradigm shift.
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