Hope of salvation must be founded on the terms on which it is promised that the mediation of our Saviour shall be applied to us,--namely obedience; and where obedience has failed, then, as suppletory to it, repentance. But what man can say that his obedience has been such, as he would approve of in another, or even in himself upon close examination, or that his repentance has not been such as to require being repented of?

… mere existence is so much better than nothing, that one would rather exist even in pain…

… it is in the apprehension of it that the horror of annihilation consists.

Johnson on April 15, 1778 as quoted in Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson