That we must all die, we always knew, I wish I had sooner remembred it.
Interpretation
The inevitability of death is something we are aware of, yet it often escapes our thoughts until it's too late.
In this quote, Samuel Johnson reflects on the universal truth of mortality and expresses a wish that he had acknowledged this truth earlier in life. The realization of our finite existence influences how we choose to live and appreciate the time we have, prompting an awareness that could lead to more meaningful actions and choices.
In practice
In a reflective conversation about life choices and regrets during a gathering with friends.
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.
I do not know whether it ought to be so, but certainly silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly.
I, place economy among the first & most important republican virtues, & public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared
Soon all of you immortals Will be as dead as we are! Come on then, what are you waiting for? Have you run out of thunderbolts?
Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.
I don't think you ever understand your life - not till it's finished and probably not then either. The more I live the less I seem to understand.
If you look within the United States, religion seems to make you a better person. Yet atheist societies do very well - better, in many ways, than devout ones.
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