Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.
Interpretation
Revenge is impulsive and personal, while vengeance is a more measured response tied to justice.
In this quote, Samuel Johnson differentiates between two responses to wrongdoing: revenge and vengeance. Revenge arises from strong emotions and personal feelings, often leading to destructive actions, while vengeance is depicted as a legitimate act of justice, where wrongs are addressed through appropriate means, suggesting a societal or moral context instead of personal grievance.
In practice
A speaker discussing the pitfalls of seeking revenge during a motivational 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.
I sometimes think that I enjoy suffering. But the truth is I would prefer something else.
The existing legal constitution is nothing but the product of a revolution. Revolution is the act of political creation in the history of classes, while constitutional legislation is the expression of the continual political vegetation of a society.
If women are not perceived to be fully within the structures of power, surely it is power that we need to redefine rather than women?
It's only possible to see people when one is able to see the world as others see it.
It is the want to know the end that makes us believe in God, or witchcraft, believe, at least, in something
On the question of the world as a whole, science founders. For scientific knowledge the world lies in fragments, the more so the more precise our scientific knowledge becomes.
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