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Very few live by choice.
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“Very few live by choice.”

Samuel Johnson

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Source
Rasselas
Date
1759
Local voice
Fictional character · Imlac
Meaning

Meaning of “Very few live by choice.”

People often inherit circumstances they did not select, which can make neighboring lives appear more desirable than their own.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Rasselas, Chapter XXI; spoken by Imlac while challenging the assumption that apparently wise people deliberately chose the condition they inhabit.

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Speaker context

Why the local voice matters

Imlac says this in Rasselas, Chapter XXI, while challenging the assumption that apparently wise people deliberately chose their circumstances.

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Themes

Ideas connected with this quotation

DecisionDeepFreedomLifeShortPerspectiveWisdom About Life
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Source identified
Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.
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“Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.”

E. M. Forster · A Room with a View · 1908
Meaning & context

Forster’s narrator contrasts the clarity of describing another person’s life from outside with the confusion of recognizing one’s own desires while actually living them.

Source details

A Room with a View, Chapter XIV, Project Gutenberg #2641. The frozen catalog wording is a clause extract from the narrator’s longer sentence: “Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome ‘nerves’ or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire.” The passage concerns Lucy Honeychurch’s self-deception in fiction, not modern psychological evidence.

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Source identified
The present state of things is the consequence of the former.
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“The present state of things is the consequence of the former.”

Samuel Johnson · Rasselas · 1759
Voice: Fictional character · Imlac
Meaning & context

Understanding present conditions requires tracing the earlier choices and causes that produced them rather than treating the present as isolated.

Source details

Rasselas, Chapter XXX; Imlac argues that studying history helps people understand the sources of present benefits and harms.

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The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.
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“The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.”

William Shakespeare · All’s Well That Ends Well · c. 1604
Voice: Fictional character · First Lord
Meaning & context

Human life is pictured as a fabric woven from favorable and painful threads rather than a story made from only one kind of experience.

Source details

All’s Well That Ends Well, Act IV, Scene 3; the First Lord reflects that human life is woven from good and ill together while discussing Bertram and Parolles. Verified against Wikisource’s 1910 facsimile transcription of the 1623 First Folio (folio spelling “The webbe of our life, is of a mingled yarne”); direct evidence resolves to the reviewed Act IV transcription.

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