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 not larger, cleaner cages that justice demands...but empty cages; not traditional animal agriculture but a complete end to all commerce in the flesh of dead animals; not more humane hunting and trapping, but the total eradication of these barbarous practices.
No Man has a more perfect reliance on the all-wise and powerful dispensations of the Supreme Being than I have, nor thinks his aid more necessary...The man must be bad indeed who can look upon the events of the American Revolution without feeling the warmest gratitude towards the great Author of the Universe whose divine interposition was so frequently manifested in our behalf....In war He directed the sword, and in peace, He has ruled in our councils.
If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world, then thank Him for breaking your heart.
The real mystery is this strange need. Why can't we just hide it and shut up? Why do we have to blab? Why do human beings need to confess?
The glory of God is a human being fully alive; and to be alive consists in beholding God.
Doesn't expecting the unexpected make the unexpected expected?
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