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.
Dreams without movement are delusions, escapes, kidβs play. You have to put your feet into your dreams if theyβre ever going to be reality. The dreamers we know and love today are the ones who worked the hardest
Ask me to play. I'll play. Ask me to shoot. I'll shoot. Ask me to pass. I'll pass. Ask me to steal, block out, sacrifice, lead, dominate. Anything. But it's not what you ask of me. It's what I ask of myself.
If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right.
Out of ten swings at the bat, you get maybe seven strikeouts, two base hits, and if you are lucky, one home run. The base hits and the home runs pay for all the strikeouts
Damn it all, you have been given a life on this beautiful planet! Get off your ass and do something!
The only joy in the world is to begin.
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