“Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
September 19, 1777, p. 351, often misquoted as being hanged in the morning.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III
Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 3
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Samuel Johnson362
English writer 1709–1784Related quotes
“It concentrates the mind wonderfully knowing that this [life] is all we can expect.”
Bernard MacLaverty (1942) Irish writer
Short story, "The break", p.25
Short Stories, The Great Profundo and Other Stories (1987)
“Sir, a man might write such stuff for ever, if he would abandon his mind to it.”
James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician
Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell Life of Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) p. 1207.
Criticism
Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) American novelist, writer, journalist, political activist
Source: I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked (1935), ; repr. University of California Press, 1994, p. 109.
Context: I used to say to our audiences: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
“Depend upon it, Sir, nothing will come of them!”
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852) British soldier and statesman
On the coming of the railways, in The Birth of the Modern (1991), by Paul Johnson. p. 993.
“A man’s at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with.”
Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter
Blood Meridian (1985)
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
