It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy unenvied, to be healthful without physic, and secure without a guard; to obtain from the bounty of nature, what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of artists and attendants, of flatterers and spies.
Interpretation
Poverty can bring a unique happiness free from envy and complications that wealth often entails.
In this quote, Samuel Johnson reflects on the unexpected advantages of poverty, suggesting that those who are poor can experience a simplicity of joy that wealthy individuals often lack. He implies that wealth brings complications such as envy, the need for constant protection, and dependence on others to maintain their lifestyle, while those who are poor can find happiness and security directly from nature without the encumbrances of wealth.
In practice
This quote could be shared at a charity event to highlight the value of happiness beyond material wealth.
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.
Pour away despair and rinse the cup. Eat happiness like bread.
Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.
I have an odd theory on happiness, and it bothers people. My general theory is that happiness is a reward for an animal doing what it should be doing. So if a horse runs, it feels happy. Or if you are too thin, you can't be happy, because evolution wants you to be tense and anxious, trying to wake up in the morning looking for food.
It is a flaw In happiness to see beyond our bourn, - It forces us in summer skies to mourn, It spoils the singing of the nightingale.
I'll keep working as long as I live because singing has taken on the feeling of joy that I had when I started, when my only responsibility was to sing well.
....that the mounds of ices, and the bowls of mint-julep and sherry cobbler they make in these latitudes, are refreshments never to be thought of afterwards, in summer, by those who would preserve contented minds.
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