Date: 1754
"The words man or animal, raise in his mind no general idea; but in this case, as in the former, some particular idea of man, which the mind can frame without thinking of Alexander or Henry, rises there, and becomes representative of all men in general: or else several ideas of men, and other ani...
preview | full record— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)
Date: 1754
"Now the application of this corporeal image to what passes in the mind, or to the action of the mind when we meditate on various subjects, or on many distinct parts of the same subjects and when we communicate these thoughts to one another, sometimes with greater, and sometimes with less agitati...
preview | full record— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)
Date: 1758, 1781
"Hence then the Cause of all Defects is seen, / one wrong Movement spoils the whole Machine."
preview | full record— Hawkins, William (1721-1801)
Date: 1758, 1781
"Alas! All Souls are subject to like Fate, / All sympathizing with the Body's State; / Let the fierce Fever burn thro' ev'ry Vein, / And drive the madding Fury to the Brain, / Nought can the Fervour of his Frenzy cool, / But Aristotle's self's a Parish Fool!"
preview | full record— Hawkins, William (1721-1801)
Date: January 27, 1759.
"That it is vain to shrink from what cannot be avoided, and to hide that from ourselves which must some time be found, is a truth which we all know, but which all neglect, and perhaps none more than the speculative reasoner, whose thoughts are always from home, whose eye wanders over life, whose ...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: September 1, 1759.
"If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur, and every recurrence would reinstate them in their former place."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: September 1, 1759.
"The incursions of troublesome thoughts are often violent and importunate; and it is not easy to a mind accustomed to their inroads to expel them immediately by putting better images into motion; but this enemy of quiet is above all others weakened by every defeat; the reflection which has been o...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: September 1, 1759.
"The mind cannot retire from its enemy into total vacancy, or turn aside from one object but by passing to another."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1759
"Their grief, however, like their joy, was transient; every thing floated in their mind unconnected with the past or future, so that one desire easily gave way to another, as a second stone cast into the water effaces and confounds the circles of the first."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1779-1780, 1781
"He had employed his mind chiefly upon works of fiction and subjects of fancy, and by indulging some peculiar habits of thought was eminently delighted with those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular ...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)