If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
Interpretation
Determination and perseverance, rather than strength, lead to great accomplishments.
In this quote, Samuel Johnson highlights the importance of determination and hard work in achieving success. He suggests that even when faced with challenges, one should not lose hope because with diligence and skill, most things are attainable. The essence of great achievements lies not in mere physical strength, but in the relentless pursuit and perseverance over time.
In practice
In a motivational speech to inspire students facing exams.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
There's no reason to have a plan B because it distracts from plan A.
An athlete may run ten thousand miles in order to prepare for one hundred yards. Quantity gives experience.
When we first begin fighting for our dreams, we have no experience and make many mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and get up eight times.
If you want to look for obstacles, what's wrong is always available. But so is what's right!
Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.
I don't want to give anyone an edge in my mind. Every time I walk out on the court, I have to feel I'm the best so I can compete well. A lot of times, my chief rival is just me.
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