If one was to think constantly of death, the business of life would stand still
Interpretation
Being overly focused on death can prevent us from living our lives to the fullest.
This quote by Samuel Johnson suggests that an incessant preoccupation with death can hinder our ability to engage with and appreciate life. If we are constantly fixated on mortality, we risk stagnating in our growth, experiences, and pursuits, ultimately missing out on the rich opportunities that life presents. It serves as a reminder to find a balance between acknowledging the reality of death while not allowing it to overshadow our living experience.
In practice
A motivational speaker discussing the importance of living in the moment during a seminar.
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.
Once you understand that Goliath is much weaker than you think he is, and David has superior technology, then you say: why do we tell the story the way we do? It becomes, actually, a far more meaningful and important story in its retelling than in the kind of unsophisticated way we've done it for, I think, too long.
Sin can bring pleasure, but never happiness.
We all came into this world naked. The rest is all drag.
Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
All humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.
No one is truly free, they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, or other people restraining them from acting according to their will.
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