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...

— 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...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1765

"Reason in the bosom pours, / Its growth improves, its fruit matures, / Each counsel of the human brain / Weighs in his scale, and stamps it vain?"

— Merrick, James (1720-1769)

Date: 1784

"In general the faculties of the mind must be expanded to a certain degree, before religion will take root, or flourish among a people; and a certain proportion of civil liberty is necessary, on which to found that expansion of the mind, which moral or religious liberty requires."

— Ramsay, James (1733-1789)