Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.
Interpretation
The quest for truth can be unsatisfying for those seeking only easy answers, leading them to pursue falsehoods instead.
In this quote, Samuel Johnson uses a metaphor of milk production to illustrate how those who cannot accept the hard truths of life may abandon genuine inquiry for more appealing falsehoods. The cow represents truth that no longer provides the satisfaction or 'milk' that people desire, prompting them to pursue more enticing but misleading alternatives, as symbolized by milking the bull.
In practice
In a debate about morality, this quote could highlight the importance of facing difficult truths rather than settling for comfortable lies.
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.
Our strength lies in spiritual concepts. It lies in public sensitivities to evil. Our greatest danger is not from invading armies. Our dangers are that we may commit suicide from within by complaisance with evil, or by public tolerance of scandalous behavior.
You can't have a value structure without a hierarchy. They're the same thing because a value structure means one thing takes precedence over another.
The movement of search can only be from the known to the known, and all that the mind can do is to be aware that this movement will never uncover the unknown. Any movement on the part of the known is still within the field of the known.
Let me go to the house of the Father.
What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty.
Only when it is seen that what decides each individual's destiny is whether or not God decides to save him from his sins, and that this is a decision that God need not make in any individual case, can one begin to grasp the biblical view of grace.
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