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.
The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.
I put my head out of my window and see how much the windβs knife wants to slice it off. On this unseen guillotine, Iβve placed the eyeless head of all my desires.
Either we must speak as we dress, or dress as we speak. Why do we profess one thing and display another? The tongue talks of chastity, but the whole body reveals impurity.
Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don't have to like it... it's just easier if you do.
The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood.
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