You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the importance of engaging personally with others, especially in teaching and relationships.
Samuel Johnson's quote highlights a common oversight in parenting and education: while one may impart knowledge or skills, such as teaching daughters about the planets, it is equally vital to foster personal connections. It suggests that if the relationship lacks warmth and engagement, the recipients of this knowledge may not appreciate or enjoy the company of the teacher, regardless of the information shared.
In practice
In a school presentation on the importance of emotional connections, I quoted Samuel Johnson.
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.
Teaching has ruined more American novelists than drink.
The dropout crisis is just the tip of an iceberg. What it doesn't count are all the kids who are in school but being disengaged from it, who don't enjoy it, who don't get any real benefit from it.
There are many more want-to-be writers out there than good editors.
The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.
Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.
write what readers want to read, which isnβt necessarily what you want to write.
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