Depend on it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
—Samuel Johnson, in James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson
There is no temper more unpropitious to interest than desultory application and unlimited inquiry, by which the desires are held in a perpetual equipoise, and the mind fluctuates between different purposes without determination. I had books of every kind round me, among which I divided my time as caprice or accident directed. I often spent the first hours of the day, in considering to what study I should devote the rest, and at last snatched up any author that lay upon the table, or perhaps fled to a coffee-house for deliverance from the anxiety of irresolution, and the gloominess of solitude.
—Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, #132
