To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer: but he whose life has passed without a contest, and who can boast neither success nor merit, can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence; ad if he is content with his own character, must owe his satisfaction to insensibility.
Interpretation
Striving against challenges is essential for true happiness and self-worth.
Samuel Johnson reflects on the importance of facing life's challenges and overcoming them as the true measure of human happiness and fulfillment. He suggests that without struggle or achievement, one merely exists without purpose, and any satisfaction derived from such a life is a result of insensibility to their own lack of merit and success.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech to inspire people to embrace challenges.
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.
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.
Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?
If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be; if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all
The antiquity and general acceptance of an opinion is not assurance of its truth.
If you haven't got any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.