You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that London embodies the essence of life, and a true intellectual would never tire of it.
Samuel Johnson's quote reflects the idea that a vibrant city like London holds all the experiences and opportunities life has to offer. It implies that an intellectual, who seeks knowledge and experience, would find endless fascination in the richness of life that London provides. To tire of such a city is to tire of life's possibilities, showing the city as a microcosm of human existence itself.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech about the importance of city life.
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 see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.
Pitch-black winter nights live in my bones.
People are not ants or bees. We do not reason or love or live or die collectively.
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.
The relations between rhetoric and ethics are disturbing: the ease with which language can be twisted is worrisome, and the fact that our minds accept these perverse games so docilely is no less cause for concern.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.