Date: September 15, 1759

"No man will read with much advantage, who is not able, at pleasure, to evacuate his mind, or who brings not to his Author an intellect defecated and pure, neither turbid with care nor agitated by pleasure."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"To the mind, as to the eye, it is difficult to compare with exactness objects vast in their extent, and various in their parts."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something acquired."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye, and while we glide along the stream of time, whatever we leave behind us is always lessening, and that which we approach increasing in magnitude."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: December 29, 1759

"If the senses were feasted with perpetual pleasure, they would always keep the mind in subjection."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1767

"The Spirit breathed His life into / Our animated clay, / And He begets our souls anew, / And seals us to that day"

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: 1779, 1781

"When Horace says of Pindar, that he pours his violence and rapidity of verse, as a river swoln with rain rushes from the mountain; or of himself, that his genius wanders in quest of poetical decorations, as the bee wanders to collect honey; he, in either case, produces a simile; the mind is impr...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779, 1781

"A memory admitting some things and rejecting others, an intellectual digestion that concocted the pulp of learning, but refused the husks, had the appearance of an instinctive elegance, of a particular provision made by Nature for literary politeness."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779, 1781

"But the power of Cowley is not so much to move the affections, as to exercise the understanding."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779, 1781

"The diction, being the vehicle of the thoughts, first presents itself to the intellectual eye; and if the first appearance offends, a further knowledge is not often sought."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)