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.
It was the same way with silence. This was more than silence. A deaf person can feel vibrations. Here there was nothing to feel.
Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.
The point is the doing of them rather than the accomplishments . There is no actor but the action; there is no experiencer but the experience.
Worse that drugs is drug trafficking. Much worse. Drugs are a disease, and I don't think that there are good drugs or that marijuana is good. Nor cigarettes. No addiction is good. I include alcohol. The only good addiction is love. Forget everything else.
In those days, our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in the making the bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, and sneered at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.
I don't think the law exists to arrive at the truth. If it did, we wouldn't have exclusionary rules, we wouldn't have presumptions of innocence, we wouldn't have proof beyond reasonable doubt. There's an enormous difference between the role of truth in law and the role of truth in science. In law, truth is one among many goals.
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