When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.
Interpretation
Civility is crucial for maintaining kindness and decency in interactions with others. Violating social norms can lead to a breakdown of these virtues.
This quote by Samuel Johnson emphasizes the importance of civility in human interactions. When civility is disregarded, it erodes the foundation for kindness and decency, creating an atmosphere where such values are difficult to restore. It serves as a cautionary reminder that our behaviors shape the social fabric, and once respect is lost, it is challenging to regain a sense of harmony and goodwill among individuals.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about social media etiquette to emphasize the importance of respectful interactions.
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 I go to Afghanistan, I realize I've been spared, due to a random genetic lottery, by being born to people who had the means to get out. Every time I go to Afghanistan I am haunted by that.
The sole and basic source of our strength is the solidarity of workers, peasants and the intelligentsia, the solidarity of the nation, the solidarity of people who seek to live in dignity, truth, and in harmony with their conscience.
Our body has this defect that, the more it is provided care and comforts, the more needs and desires it finds.
Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn't.
Evil thenceforth became my good.
'Tis better to suffer wrong than do it.
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