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Effort
Virtue and Vice
61. Diligence; Focus
"Resolve, and keep your resolution;
choose, and pursue your
choice. If you spend this day in study, you will find yourself
still more able to study to-morrow; not that you are to expect
that you shall all at once obtain a complete victory. Depravity
is not very easily overcome. Resolution will sometimes relax,
and diligence will sometimes be interrupted; but let no
accidental surprise or deviation, whether short or long, dispose
you to despondency."
Boswell: Life
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342. Diligence
"Diligence in employments of less consequence is the most
successful introduction to greater enterprises."
Johnson: Sir Francis Drake
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440. Diligence; Disappointment;
Perseverance
"A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected."
Johnson: Rasselas [Imlac]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from
Rasselas.
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441. Diligence; Perseverance;
Skill
"Few things are impossible to diligence and skill."
Johnson: Rasselas [Imlac]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from
Rasselas.
Link
570. Diligence
"There is a general succession of events in which contraries are
produced by periodical vicissitudes; labour and care are
rewarded with success, success produces confidence, confidence
relaxes industry, and negligence ruins that reputation which
accuracy had raised."
Johnson: Rambler #21 (May 29, 1750)
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593. Adversity; Diligence; Equanimity;
Misfortune; Patience; Perseverance
"Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished
from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may
lawfully struggle; for the calamities of life, like the
necessities of nature, are calls to labour and diligence. When
we feel any pressure of distress, we are not to conclude that we
can only obey the will of Heaven by languishing under it, any
more than when we perceive the pain of thirst, we are to imagine
that water is prohibited."
Johnson: Rambler #32 (July 7, 1750)
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668. Diligence; Expectation;
Schedules
"The distance is commonly very great between actual performances
and speculative possibility. It is natural to suppose that as
much as has been done to-day may be done to-morrow; but on the
morrow some difficulty emerges, or some external impediment
obstructs. Indolence, interruption, business, and pleasure, all
take their turns of retardation; and every long work is
lengthened by a thousand causes that can, and ten thousand that
cannot, be recounted. Perhaps no extensive and multifarious
performance was ever affected within the term originally fixed in
the undertaker's mind. He that runs against Time has an
antagonist not subject to casualties."
Johnson: Pope (Lives of the Poets)
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1,032. Acclimitization;
Diligence
"Dependence of the soul upon the seasons, those temporary and
periodical ebbs and flows of intellect, may, I suppose, be justly
derided as the fumes of vain imagination. ... While this notion
has possession of the head, it produces the inability which it
supposes. Our powers owe much of their energy to our hopes.
When success is attainable, diligence is enforced; but when it
is admitted that the faculties are suppressed by a cross wind or
a cloudy sky the day is given up without resistance; for who can
contend with the course of Nature?"
Johnson: Milton (Lives of the Poets)
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1,037. Diligence
"What we hope ever to do with ease we may learn first to do with
diligence."
Johnson: Milton (Lives of the Poets)
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1,098. Diligence; Time
"He that hopes to look back hereafter with satisfaction upon past
years must learn to know the present value of single minutes, and
endeavour to let no particle of time fall useless to the
ground."
Johnson: Rambler #108 (March 30, 1751)
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1,105. Audacity; Diligence; Vanity;
Youth
"I am afraid there is little hope of persuading the young and
sprightly part of my readers... to learn... the difference
between diligence and hurry, between speed and precipitation; to
prosecute their designs with calmness, to watch the concurrence
of opportunity, and, endeavour to find the lucky moment which
they cannot make. Youth is the time of enterprise and hope;
having yet no occasion of comparing our force with any opposing
power, we naturally form presumptions in our own favour, and
imagine that obstruction and impediment will give way before us.
The first repulses rather inflame vehemence than teach prudence;
a brave and generous mind is long before it suspects its own
weakness, or submits to sap the difficulties which it suspected
to subdue by storm. Before disappointments have enforced the
dictates of philosophy, we believe it in our power to shorten the
interval between the first cause and the last effect; we laugh
at the timorous delay of plodding industry, and fancy that, by
increasing the fire, we can at pleasure accelerate the
projection."
Johnson: Rambler #111 (April 9, 1751)
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1,110. Complacency; Diligence; Praise;
Success
"It frequently happens that applause abates diligence. Whosoever
finds himself to have performed more than was demanded will be
contented to spare the labour of unnecessary performances, and
sit down to enjoy at ease his superfluities of honour. He whom
success has made confident of his abilities quickly claims the
privilege of negligence, and looks contemptuously on the gradual
advances of a rival, whom he imagines himself able to leave
behind whenever he shall again summon his force to the contest.
But long intervals of pleasure dissipate attention and weaken
constancy; nor is it easy for him that has sunk from diligence
into sloth to rouse out of his lethargy, to recollect his
notions, rekindle his curiosity, and engage with his former
ardour in the toils of his study."
Johnson: Rambler #111 (April 9, 1751)
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1,112. Complacency; Diligence
"A thousand beauties in their first blossom, by an imprudent
exposure to the open world, have suddenly withered at the blast
of infamy; and men who might have subjected new regions to the
empire of learning, have been lured by the praise of their first
productions from academical retirement, and wasted their days in
vice and dependance. The virgin who too soon aspires to
celebrity and conquest perishes by childish vanity, ignorant
credulity, or guiltless indiscretion. The genius who catches at
laurels and preferment before his time, mocks the hopes that he
had excited, and loses those years which might have been most
usefully employed; the years of youth, of spirit, and
vivacity."
Johnson: Rambler #111 (April 9, 1751)
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1,196. Diligence;
Procrastination
"The certainty that life cannot be long, and the probability that
it will be much shorter than nature allows, ought to awaken every
man to the active prosecution of whatever he is desirous to
perform. It is true, that no diligence can ascertain success;
death may intercept the swiftest career; but he who is cut off in
the execution of an honest undertaking has at least the honour of
falling in his rank, and has fought the battle, though he missed
the victory."
Johnson: Rambler #134 (June 29, 1751)
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1,271. Diligence; Laziness
"Indolence is therefore one of the vices from which those whom it
once infects are seldom reformed. Every other species of luxury
operates upon some appetite that is quickly satiated, and
requires some concurrence of art or accident which every place
will not supply; but the desire of ease acts equally at all
hours, and the longer it is indulged is the more increased. To
do nothing is in every man's power; we can never want an
opportunity of omitting duties. The lapse to indolence is soft
and imperceptible, because it is only a mere cessation of
activity; but the return to diligence is difficult, because it
implies a change from rest to motion, from privation to
reality."
Johnson: Rambler #155 (September 10, 1751)
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1,317. Diligence; Independence
"Every man considers a necessity of compliance with any will but
his own as the lowest state of ignominy and meanness; few are so
far lost in cowardice or negligence as not to rouse at the first
insult of tyranny, and exert all their force against him who
usurps their property or invades any privilege of speech or
action. Yet we see often those who never wanted spirit to repel
encroachment or oppose violence, at last, by a gradual relaxation
of vigilance, delivering up, without capitulation, the fortress
which they defended against assault, and laying down unbidden the
weapons which they grasped the harder for every attempt to wrest
them from their hands. Men eminent for spirit and wisdom often
resign themselves to voluntary pupilage, and suffer their lives
to be modeled by officious ignorance, and their choice to be
regulated by presumptuous stupidity."
Johnson: Rambler #162 (October 5, 1751)
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1,351. Diligence; Vanity
"Men have sometimes appeared of such transcendent abilities that
their slightest and most cursory performances excel all that
labour and study can enable meaner intellects to compose; as
there are regions of which the spontaneous products cannot be
equaled in other soils by care and culture. But it is no less
dangerous for any man to place himself in this rank of
understanding, and fancy that he is born to be illustrious
without labour, than to omit the cares of husbandry, and expect
from his ground the blossoms of Arabia."
Johnson: Rambler #169 (October 29, 1751)
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1,597. Diligence; Success
"It does not, indeed, always happen, that diligence is fortunate;
the wisest schemes are broken by unexpected accidents; the most
constant perseverance sometimes toils through life without a
recompense; but labour, though unsuccessful, is more eligible
than idleness."
Johnson: Adventurer #111 (November 27, 1753)
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