If we estimate dignity by immediate usefulness, agriculture is undoubtedly the first and noblest science.
Interpretation
Agriculture is essential and holds a high value due to its direct impact on human survival and well-being.
In this quote, Samuel Johnson emphasizes the importance of agriculture as a fundamental science that provides immediate benefits to society. He suggests that dignity and value should be measured by the utility of a discipline, and since agriculture is crucial for sustaining life and supporting communities, it deserves recognition as a noble pursuit.
In practice
In a speech about sustainable practices, one could quote Johnson to highlight the importance of agriculture.
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.
But nature did not deem it her business to make the discovery of her laws easy for us.
The universe will finally become a ball of radiation, becoming more and more rarified and passing into longer and longer wave-lengths. The longest waves of radiation are Hertzian waves of the kind used in broadcasting. About every 1500 million years this ball of radio waves will double in diameter; and it will go on expanding in geometrical progression for ever. Perhaps then I may describe the end of the physical world as-one stupendous broadcast.
The problem of neurology is to understand man himself.
Many people find the universe confusing - it's not.
The work on ants has profoundly affected the way I think about humans.
My interest in science started quite early. My earliest school recollection, from age 6, is actually of mathematics, realizing that one could fill an entire page with digits and never come to the largest possible number, so I saw what was meant by infinity.
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