A companion loves some agreeable qualities which a man may possess, but a friend loves the man himself.
James BoswellRead
Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others. Sometimes it does. But the danger is, that while a man grows better pleased with himself, he may be growing less pleasing to others. Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has presented.
Interpretation
Wine may boost self-confidence but can diminish social appeal.
This quote by James Boswell reflects on the idea that while wine can enhance a person's self-satisfaction, it does not necessarily improve their likability to others. Instead, it can unveil aspects of their personality that may have been suppressed out of social anxiety, highlighting the duality of alcohol's effects on one's self-image versus social interactions.
In practice
During a toast at a friend's wedding, you might include this quote to discuss the effects of wine on social gatherings.
A companion loves some agreeable qualities which a man may possess, but a friend loves the man himself.
There is nothing worth the wear of winning, but laughter and the love of friends.
He who has provoked the lash of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.
Friendship, "the wine of life," should, like a well-stocked cellar, be continually renewed.
Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals.
.. that which renders morality an active principle and constitutes virtue our happiness, and vice our misery: it is probable, I say, that this final sentence depends on some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in the whole species.
But knowledge does not protect one. Life is contemptuous of knowledge; it forces it to sit in the anterooms, to wait outside. Passion, energy, lies: these are what life admires. Still, anything can be endured if all humanity is watching. The martyrs prove it. We live in the attention of others. We turn to it as flowers to the sun.
Though liberty is established by law, we must be vigilant, for liberty to enslave us is always present under that very liberty. Our Constitution speaks of the "general welfare of the people." Under that phrase all sorts of excesses can be employed by lusting tyrants to make us bondsmen.
Fishing is a... discipline in the equality of men - for all men are equal before fish.
The boy was lying, fast asleep, on a rude bed upon the floor; so pale with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of his prison, that he looked like death; not death as it shews in shroud and coffin, but in the guise it wears when life has just departed; when a young and gentle spirit has, but an instant, fled to Heaven: and the gross air of the world has not had time to breathe upon the changing dust it hallowed.
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