HKB
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Often appears with: rhetorical strategy · reputation and failure · pride, vanity, and humility · perseverance · logic, method, and demonstration · justice as a virtue
Usually: argument (1) · injustice endured (1) · the test or trial (1) · exhortation (1)
“To faint or loiter, when only the last efforts are required, is to steer the ship through tempests, and abandon it to the winds in sight of land;” Samuel Johnson, The Works of Samuel Johnson, in Sixteen Volumes. Vol · insight
Johnson argues that perseverance must be protected against discouragement, since last efforts matter; he adds lessons about ordering strong arguments late, sustaining excellence, and avoiding ruin by a single failure.
and his perseverance broken; that he knew his design to be unfinished, but that, when he saw the end so near, he could no longer refuse to be at rest. Against the instillations of this frigid opiate, the heart should be secured by all the considerations which once concurred to kindle the ardour of enterprise. Whatever motive first incited action, has still greater force to stimulate perseverance; since he that might…