WHAT WORK DOES TO FAMILIES

'To be unhappy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition.'
Samuel Johnson in David Gibson, Destiny, p.64. 

GRIEF

'The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment...Sorrow is kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life and is remedied by exercise and motion.'

Samuel Johnson in David Brooks, The Road of Character, p.226.

SAMUEL JOHNSON

'Johnson was a great moralist because of his deficiencies. He came to understand that he would never defeat them. He came to understand that his story would not be the sort of virtue-conquers-vice story people like to tell. It would be, ta best, a virtue learns-to-live-with-vice story. He wrote that he did seek cures for his failings, but palliatives. This awareness of permanent struggle made him sympathetic to others' failings. He was a moralist, but a tenderhearted one.'

David Brooks, The Road to Character, p.224.