Date: Saturday, December 21, 1751
"A careless glance upon a favourite author, or transient survey of the varieties of life, is sufficient to supply the first hint or seminal idea, which, enlarged by the gradual accretion of matter stored in the mind, is by the warmth of fancy easily expanded into flowers, and sometimes ripened in...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Tuesday, February 12, 1751
"There are many diseases both of the body and mind, which it is far easier to prevent than to cure, and therefore I hope you will think me employed in an office not useless either to learning or virtue, if I describe the symptoms of an intellectual malady, which, though at first it seizes only th...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Tuesday, January 22, 1751
"It is certain, that, with or without our consent, many of the few moments allotted us will slide imperceptibly away, and that the mind will break, from confinement to its stated task, into sudden excursions."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Tuesday, January 22, 1751
"But this invisible riot of the mind, this secret prodigality of being, is secure from detection, and fearless of reproach."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Tuesday, January 22, 1751
"The infatuation strengthens by degrees, and like the poison of opiates, weakens his powers, without any external symptoms of malignity."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Tuesday, January 22, 1751
"It is, perhaps, not impossible to promote the cure of this mental malady, by close application to some new study, which may pour in fresh ideas, and keep curiosity in perpetual motion."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1754
"I shall not, therefore, say any thing further about the nature of mind in general, that secret spring of thought, unknown and unknowable, but shall content myself to observe, in Mr. Locke's method and with his assistance, something about the phænomena of the human mind, by which we may judge sur...
preview | full record— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)
Date: 1754
"Sensation would be of little use to form the understanding, if we had no other faculty than mere passive perception; but without sensation these other faculties would have nothing to operate upon, reflection would have by consequence nothing to reflect upon, and it is by reflection that we multi...
preview | full record— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)
Date: 1754
"If we consider them like materials, for so they may be considered likewise, employed to raise the fabric of our intellectual system, they will appear like mud, and straw, and lath, materials fit to erect some frail, and homely cottage, but not of substance, nor value sufficient for the construct...
preview | full record— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)
Date: 1754
"He maintained, according to his usual method, one hypothesis by another, and assumed that memory consists in certain traces made on the brain by the thoughts that pass through it, and that as long as they last we remember, but that the brain of the child in the womb being too moist, and too soft...
preview | full record— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)