Date: 1706 [first published 1658]
"Appetite, the Affection of the Mind, by which we are stirr'd up to any thing, inordinate Desire, Lust: Also the desire of Nourishment, or a Stomach to one's Victuals."
preview | full record— Phillips, Edward (1630-1696)
Date: 1710, 1734
"Ancient and rooted prejudices do often pass into principles: and those propositions which once obtain the force and credit of a principle, are not only themselves, but likewise whatever is deducible from them, thought privileged from all examination. And there is no absurdity so gross, which by ...
preview | full record— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)
Date: Wednesday, October 31, 1711
"You have, in my Opinion, raised a good presumptive Argument from the increasing Appetite the Mind has to Knowledge, and to the extending its own Faculties, which cannot be accomplished, as the more restrained Perfection of lower Creatures may, in the Limits of a short Life."
preview | full record— Hughes, John (1678?-1720)
Date: 1733
"Nothing is more void of real improvement and instruction to the mind, and more fulsom, than heaps of quotations, and tedious disquisitions what opinions such and such men were of, in relation to matters properly determinable only by right reason and Scripture."
preview | full record— Browne, Peter (d. 1735)
Date: 1774
"Many people lose a great deal of time by reading: for they read frivolous and idle books, such as the absurd romances of the two last centuries; where characters, that never existed, are insipidly displayed, and sentiments that were never felt, pompously described: the Oriental ravings and extra...
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1782
"There is something so amazingly grand--so stupendously affecting--in the contemplating the works of the Divine Architect, either in the moral, or the intellectual world, that I think one may rightly call it the cordial of the soul--it is the physic of the mind--and the best antidote against weak...
preview | full record— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)
Date: 1782
"I have heard it more than once observed of fortunate adventurers--they have come home enriched in purse--but wretchedly barren in intellects--the mind, my dear Jack, wants food--as well as the stomach--why then should not one wish to increase in knowledge as well as money?"
preview | full record— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)