Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.
Interpretation
Society reflects the collective choices of its individuals seeking the best possible quality of life.
In this quote, Samuel Johnson suggests that the quality and luxury of a society are determined by the choices and desires of its members. He implies that people will always strive to attain the highest standard of living available to them, indicating that luxury is relative and shaped by the social and economic conditions of the time.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about economic development to highlight how society's resources reflect individual aspirations.
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.
When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.
Nothing hinders a thing from being natural so much as the straining ourselves to make it seem so.
Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few people; what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence of others.
It is our very search, our lust for the miraculous and magical, that hides from us the truth that simply to be, simply to know I am, is already the miracle that we seek. Everything, as it is, is perfect, but you must stop seeing it as if in a mirror, as if in a dream.
The danger to which the success of revolutions is most exposed, is that of attempting them before the principles on which they proceed, and the advantages to result from them, are sufficiently seen and understood.
Mitt Romney is the guy who said corporations are people. No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people.
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