Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.
Interpretation
Curiosity drives great minds and is essential throughout life.
This quote by Samuel Johnson emphasizes the vital role that curiosity plays in the minds of intelligent and generous individuals. It suggests that a profound desire to learn and explore is the fundamental passion that shapes their thoughts and actions from the beginning to the end of their lives.
In practice
Using this quote in a motivational speech about the importance of lifelong learning.
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.
Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.
Forget like a child any injury done by somebody immediately. Never keep it in the heart. It kindles hatred.
The ending of sorrow is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge is always within the shadow of ignorance. Meditation is freedom from thought and a movement in the ecstasy of truth. Meditation is explosion of intelligence.
Can you gather your vital breath and yet be tender like a newborn baby?
Some people see the glass half full. Others see it half empty. I see a glass that's twice as big as it needs to be.
If one were to bring ten of the wisest men in the world together and ask them what was the most stupid thing in existence, they would not be able to discover anything so stupid as astrology.
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