Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.
Interpretation
Attacks on one's beliefs can undermine confidence and create discomfort and anger towards those who question them.
This quote by Samuel Johnson highlights the emotional impact that criticism of oneβs beliefs can have on an individual. It points out that when someone challenges our deeply held convictions, it can lead to a sense of unease and fragility in our self-assurance, provoking feelings of anger towards the critic. This emphasizes the sensitive nature of personal beliefs and the inherent vulnerability that comes with holding them dearly.
In practice
During a debate about religion, one could use this quote to explain why personal beliefs can be sensitive subjects.
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.
I think the best analogy for where we are right now is that America is Elvis Presley -- the most beautiful, talented, rebellious nation in the history of Earth. And now, you're in your Vegas years. You've squeezed yourself into a white jumpsuit, you're wheezing your way through 'Love Me Tender' and you might be about to pass away bloated on the toilet. But you're still the King.
Religion teaches us that our lives here on earth are to be used for transformation.
Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time, and sometimes it seemed to me that her abandonment touched that strange mathematical point of endlessness, a point with no width, occupying no space.
For benefits return benefits; for injuries return justice without any admixture of revenge.
The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.
Contemporary society has become dry, not for lack of wonders but for lack of wonder.
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