Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English
"Let us apply this to the mind; let us see how ideas work, and how impressions fix upon it, till at length a violent passion takes entire possession, destroys all the powers it possessed when at ease, and entirely subdues it."
preview | full record— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)
Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English
"Soon as I close my eyes, here in this brain, where all my nerves are concentred, her dark eyes are imprinted. Here--I don't know how to describe it:--but if I shut my eyes, hers are immediately before me like a sea, like a precipice, and they occupy all the fibres of my head."
preview | full record— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)
Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English
"A secret sympathy had attached her to him from their first acquaintance; and now, after so long an intimacy, after passing through so many different scenes, the impression was engraved on her mind for ever."
preview | full record— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)
Date: December 10, 1774; 1775
"That disposition, which is so strong in children, still continues with us, of catching involuntarily the general air, and manner, of those with whom we are most conversant; with this difference only, that a young mind is naturally pliable and imitative; but in a more advanced state it grows rigi...
preview | full record— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)
Date: 1774
"The treaty part you must chiefly acquire by reading the treaties themselves, and the histories and memoirs relative to them; not but that inquiries and conversations upon those treaties will help you greatly, and imprint them better in your mind."
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1774
"This, which I practiced for some years, not only improved and formed my style, but imprinted in my mind and memory the best thoughts of the best authors."
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1774
"I will study Demosthenes and Cicero, not to discover an old Athenian or Roman custom, nor to puzzle myself with the value of talents, mines, drachms, and sesterces, like the learned blockheads in us; but to observe their choice of words, their harmony of diction, their method, their distribution...
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1775
"To account for the idea of time, it appears to me to be sufficient to attend to a few well known facts, viz. that impressions made by external objects remain a certain space of time in the mind, that this time is different according to the strength, and other circumstances of the impression, and...
preview | full record— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)
Date: 1775
"If I look upon a house, and then shut my eyes, the impression it has made upon my mind does not immediately vanish."
preview | full record— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)
Date: 1776-1789
"But the words of the assassin sunk deep into the mind of Commodus, and left an indelible impression of fear and hatred against the whole body of the senate"
preview | full record— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)