...woodcarving or blacksmithing. If anybody ever knew how to write it was Samuel Johnson, and he said, "A man may write at any time if he will set himself doggedly to it." There are thousands of young people in this country who want to become authors. It is an ambition laudable...

...March, 1752, on which day it closed. This is a strong confirmation of the truth of a remark of his, that "a man may write at any time, if he will set...from the stores of his mind during all that time. The Rambler has increased in fame as in age. Soon after its first folio edition was concluded, it was...

...composition ; and how a man can write at one time, and not at another. — ' Nay (said Dr. Johnson) a man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly1 to it.' I here began to indulge old Scottish sentiments, and to express a warm regret, that,...

...strong confirmation of the truth of a remark of his, which I have had occasion to quote elsewhere, that "a man may write at any time, if he will set...constitutional indolence, his depression of spirits, and his labor in carrying on his Dictionary, be answered the stated calls of the press twice a week from the...

...rule to splurge in the night hours, and in the morning to purge. On the other hand, Johnson maintained that a man may write at any time if he will set himself doggedly to it. Words, however, are things ; and the man who accords To his language the license to outrage his soul,...

...which computation Johnson's essays would be but farthing pieces) we can put the great man's own dictum: 'A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.' Thirdly, it is a popular fallacy — and branded as such by Lamb himself — that enough is as good...

...was still obliged to give exclusive attention to the matter under treatment. Dr. Johnson's saying, that a man may write at any time if he will set himself doggedly to it, was often upon his lips, and had even been of help to him, as no doubt it has to many another man obliged...

...caught young. 4. Time has not cropped the roses from your cheek, though sorrow long has wasted them. 5. A man may write at any time if he will set himself doggedly to it. 6. When you come home, we will not believe you. 7. I have a better opinion of him now than I once nad....

...lost. Ibid., W, II, 25. SELF-CONFIDENCE is the first requisite to great undertakings. Ibid., IV, 6. A MAN may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it. Ibid., B, I, 203. No great man will ever drill. None will ever solve the problem of his character according...

...and his type locked up while waiting for the author's corrections. But while Johnson may have bragged that "a man may write at any time if he will set himself doggedly to it," accepting writing as labor, rather than the more noble activity Arendt calls "work," he always had...