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.
People say that the soul, on hearing the song of creation, entered the body, but in reality the soul itself was the song.
The compass of compassion asks not what is good for me? but what is good? Not what is best for me but what is best. Not what is right for me but what is right. Not how much can we take? but How much ought we leave? and how much might we give? Not what is easy but what is worthy. Not what is practical but what is moral.
Let us not envy some men their accumulated riches; their burden would be too heavy for us; we could not sacrifice, as they do, health, quiet, honor and conscience, to obtain them: It is to pay so dear from them that the bargain is a loss.
The custom of Mother Church in baptizing infants is certainly not to be scorned, nor is it to be regarded in any way as superfluous, nor is it to be believed that its tradition is anything except apostolic.
God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through.
and never really thought I'd amount to anything. It was precisely what I wanted the whole world to think; then I could sneak in, if that's what they wanted, and sneak out again, which I did.
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