Walking

"A French author has advanced this seeming paradox, that very few men know how to take a walk; and, indeed, it is true, that few know how to take a walk with a prospect of any other pleasure, than the same company would have afforded them at home."

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"He that enlarges his curiosity after the works of nature, demonstrably multiplies the inlets to happiness;"

Samuel Johnson
The Rambler, 5


As I have grown busier in life, and more distracted, I have missed the simple, restorative joys of a good walk (one where my awareness was focused on my surroundings) and a deeper awareness and acquaintance with nature.

Self-Deception

"...for we are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude; but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favour, and reason by degrees submits to absurdity, as the eye is in time accommodated to darkness."

Samuel Johnson
The Rambler, 8

all the arts of destroying time

My eye was caught by a single phrase today from Samuel Johnson:

"all the arts of destroying time"

In our age of electronic distractions, those arts have truly reached their zenith.

Two things a writer should be good at

"The task of our present writers is very different; it requires, together with that learning which is to be gained from books, that experience which can never be attained by solitary diligence, but must arise from general converse and accurate observation of the living world."

Samuel Johnson
The Rambler, 4

Keep your eye on the goal...

"He that directs his steps to a certain point, must frequently turn his eyes to that place which he strives to reach;"

Samuel Johnson
The Rambler, 2

My wife and I have begun using this concept as a framework for our family 'presidency meetings.'  We are finding that writing down and reviewing frequently our progress on the goals we have set gives us a power to reach them that has often escaped us in the past.

Hope

"The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope."

Samuel Johnson
The Rambler, 2

Criticism

"Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority: men please themselves with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider survey, than others, and detected faults and follies, which escape vulgar observation."

Samuel Johnson
The Rambler, 2

This is as true of myself, I am afraid, as it is of any other man.