Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.
Interpretation
Curiosity and leisure can lead to significant knowledge, but distractions often get in the way.
This quote by Samuel Johnson highlights the importance of leisure and curiosity as essential drives for acquiring useful knowledge. However, he points out that these noble pursuits are frequently hindered by trivial tasks and competition that divert attention from the deeper explorations of knowledge and understanding.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of lifelong learning, one might quote this to emphasize the need for curiosity over trivial concerns.
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.
Why is it that we understand playing the cello will require work, but we attribute writing to the magic of inspiration?
Studying entrepreneurshi p without doing it... is like studying the appreciation of music without listening to it.
Except when he has regressive tendencies, the child's nature is to aim directly and energetically at functional independence.
Teaching is a distraction and a burden, but it's also an incredible stimulus. And a reprieve, in a way. When you're trying to work on something and it's not going anywhere, you can go to school and there's a two-and-a-half-hour block of time in which you can accomplish something.
History is the only true teacher, the revolution the best school for the proletariat.
How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.
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