“When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully” — Johnson, recorded by Boswell in 1777 and repeated ever since as a remark about deadlines. Boswell’s surrounding pages give it a second life. The condemned man was the Reverend William Dodd, convicted of forgery, and the line was misdirection: Johnson had written Dodd’s appeal for mercy himself and was steering the conversation away from it.