What signifies protesting so against flattery when a person speaks well of one, it must either be true or false, you know if true, let us rejoice in his good opinion if he lies, it is a proof at least that he loves more to please me, than to sit s
Interpretation
Protesting against flattery can sometimes overlook the positivity in compliments.
Samuel Johnson highlights the complexity of our reactions to praise and flattery. He suggests that when someone speaks well of us, we have a choice to either accept the truth of their praise and rejoice in it or recognize that if the praise is false, it reflects the other person's desire to please us rather than their genuine opinion. Essentially, we should focus on the motivations behind kind words and the benefits they may bring, rather than defensively rejecting them.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech on the importance of accepting compliments graciously.
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 compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.
One gains universal applause who mingles the useful with the agreeable, at once delighting and instructing the reader.
The things you do not have to say make you rich. Saying things you do not have to say weakens your talk. Hearing things you do not need to hear dulls your hearing. And things you know before you hear them — those are you, those are why you are in the world.
Except for some effects that I attribute mostly to age, my intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy as it was before I made a study of these issues.
I will not just live my life. I will not just spend my life. I will invest my life.
Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.
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