I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.
Interpretation
The type of government does not significantly affect individual happiness.
This quote by Samuel Johnson emphasizes the idea that the form of government a person lives under is not as crucial to their happiness as other factors in life. Johnson suggests that regardless of whether one lives under monarchy, democracy, or any other system, the essence of personal satisfaction and fulfillment is largely independent of political structures.
In practice
A professor might use this quote in a lecture about political philosophy.
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.
Funk is the unending cycle of life. It's the ultimate concept—wherever your imagination will take it.
There are manifold tones of mental life, or, in other words, our psychic life may be lived at different heights, now nearer to action, now further removed from it, according to the degree of our attention to life.
If all of this, all the life of a stream of water, can be nothing but a pile of atoms, how much more is possible?
For a time Jack was angry; but when he had been without the jacket for a short while he began to realize that being half-clothed is infinitely more uncomfortable than being entirely naked. Soon he did not miss his clothing in the least, and from that he came to revel in the freedom of his unhampered state.
Seeing ourselves as others see us would probably confirm our worst suspicions about them.
They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet be thought of less value than it is.
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