He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
Interpretation
Pursuing wealth or power can lead to a loss of integrity and bravery if one fails.
This quote by Samuel Johnson emphasizes the moral risks associated with the relentless pursuit of wealth and power. When an individual strives towards these goals but falls short, they may compromise their values, such as honesty and courage, to cope with their perceived failures, suggesting that the quest for such ambitions can corrupt one's character.
In practice
In a motivational speech about integrity in business practices.
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 pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.
So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness.
What an ironic tragedy that an affluent, βChristianβ minority in the world continues to hoard its wealth while hundreds of millions of people hover on the edge of starvation!
I went to medical school because I wanted to ask the big questions. Do we have a soul? Does God exist? What happens after death?
In America there must be only citizens, not divided by grade, first and second, but citizens, east, west, north, and south.
I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That's why we've got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap.
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