To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.
Interpretation
Facing and overcoming challenges leads to true happiness.
This quote by Samuel Johnson emphasizes the idea that true fulfillment and happiness come from our ability to confront and overcome the challenges we face in life. It suggests that the struggle itself can bring about a sense of achievement and joy, which surpasses mere pleasure derived from comfort or ease.
In practice
This quote could be used in a motivational speech to inspire people facing tough times.
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.
In order to see, you have to stop being in the middle of the picture
The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.
Women should have the true nurse calling, the good of the sick first the second only the consideration of what is their 'place' to do - and that women who want for a housemaid to do this or the charwomen to do that, when the patient is suffering, have not the making of a nurse in them.
Our task is to listen to the news that is always arriving out of silence.
Iβve never been certain whether the moral of the Icarus story should only be, as is generally accepted, βdonβt try to fly too high,β or whether it might also be thought of as βforget the wax and feathers, and do a better job on the wings.
If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life.
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