The present time is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.
Interpretation
The present often fails to satisfy our desires, leading us to rely on memories or future hopes for fulfillment.
In this quote, Samuel Johnson reflects on the nature of human experience, suggesting that the present moment often falls short of our expectations or dreams. This inadequacy drives us to either dwell on past experiences that provided joy or to look forward to future possibilities for satisfaction, thus highlighting the tension between our current existence and our desires.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of living in the moment, this quote can emphasize the struggle between present experiences and past memories.
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)f we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution.
The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies.
The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was... The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
Freedom is an indivisible word. If we want to enjoy it, and fight for it, we must be prepared to extend it to everyone, whether they are rich or poor, whether they agree with us or not, no matter what their race or the color of their skin.
There is a crisis of public morality. Instead of policing bedrooms, we ought to be doing a better job policing boardrooms.
Just as 'Islam' literally means 'peace,' none of the 99 names of Allah mean violence. Similarly, every religion in the world stands for peace, compassion, and brotherhood.
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