As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a shift in the speaker's expectations of people as they gain more understanding of humanity.
Samuel Johnson suggests that as one learns more about human nature and the imperfections that come with it, their standards for what constitutes a 'good man' become more lenient. This indicates a deeper acceptance of humanity's flaws and a recognition that goodness can take many forms.
In practice
In a discussion about human behavior during a psychology class.
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.
My childhood began, as everybody's childhood begins, with prejudices. Man finds prejudices beside his cradle, puts them from him a little in the course of his career, and often, alas! takes to them again in his old age.
The 'frankness' of people sunk below shame is a very cheap frankness.
There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.
Wouldn't it be better to have a watertight law designed to catch the guilty, rather than a press release law designed to catch the headlines?
Intuitive versus analytical? That's a foolish choice. It's foolish, just like trying to choose between being realistic or idealistic. You need both in life.
Political Economy, in truth, has never pretended to give advice to mankind with no lights but its own; though people who knew nothing but political economy (and therefore knew it ill) have taken upon themselves to advise, and could only do so by such lights as they had.
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