That distrust which intrudes so often on your mind is a mode of melancholy, which, if it be the business of a wise man to be happy, it is foolish to indulge; and if it be a duty to preserve our faculties entire for their proper use, it is criminal. Suspicion is very often an useless pain.
Interpretation
Distrust and suspicion can lead to unnecessary sadness, and it's wise to avoid indulging in them.
In this quote, Samuel Johnson suggests that harboring distrust not only detracts from our happiness but is also a misuse of our mental capacities. He emphasizes that suspicion can cause unnecessary suffering and that a wise person's duty is to maintain their faculties for more constructive purposes, making indulgence in such negative feelings both foolish and potentially harmful.
In practice
This quote can be used in a psychology seminar discussing the impact of negative emotions.
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.
The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.
Give so much to the improvement of yourself, that you don’t have time to criticize others.
That is another chamber of my heart that shows no electrical activity - the chamber that used to flicker into life when I saw a film that moved me, or read a book that inspired me, or listened to music that made me want to cry. I closed that chamber myself, for all the usual reasons. And now I seem to have made a pact with some philistine devil: if I don't attempt to re-open it, I will be allowed just enough energy and optimism to get through a working day without wanting to hang myself.
Resentment is an extremely bitter diet, I have no desire to make my own toxins.
No psychologist should pretend to understand what he does not understand... Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing.
If I experiment enough, I get a deeper understanding.
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