Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
Interpretation
Life in society requires mutual compromises among individuals.
Samuel Johnson's quote highlights the essential nature of cooperation in human interactions. It suggests that for society to function and thrive, individuals must be willing to make concessions and compromises, conceding certain desires and beliefs for the common good and harmonious existence within a community.
In practice
During a team-building workshop, I shared this quote to emphasize the importance of compromise in group dynamics.
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.
Addiction should never be treated as a crime. It has to be treated as a health problem. We do not send alcoholics to jail in this country. Over 500,000 people are in our jails who are nonviolent drug users.
Of her own experience she had no memory of the thing happening; but in her instinct, which was the experience of all mothers of wolves, there lurked a memory of fathers that had eaten their new-born and helpless progeny.
Pain and guilt can't be taken away with the wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!
Some events do take place but are not true;_x000D_ others are, although they never occurred.
We need a right view of the cross. It is both a historical event that can take us to Heaven and a current event that can bring Heaven to bear on Earth.
The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
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