Date: 1754
"The mind would be little more than a channel through which ideas and notions glided from entity into nonentity."
preview | full record— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)
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.
"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: 1760-1761, 1762
"A mind thus sunk for a while below its natural standard, is qualified for stronger flights, as those first retire who would spring forward with greater vigour"
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Date: 1785
"BOSWELL. 'But, sir,'tis like walking up and down a hill; one man will naturally do the one better than the other. A hare will run up a hill best, from her fore-legs being short; a dog down.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, sir; that is from mechanical powers. If you make mind mechanical, you may argue in that ma...
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1791
"I cannot allow any fragment whatever that floats in my memory concerning the great subject of this work to be lost."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)