Date: Tuesday, March 10, 1752

"It is not sufficient to maintain the first vigour; for excellence loses its effect upon the mind by custom, as light after a time ceases to dazzle."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1752

"On the contrary, when all without looks dark and dismal, there is often a secret Ray of Light within the Mind , which turns every thing to real Joy and Gladness."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

"Upon the whole, however, she past a miserable and sleepless Night, her gentle Mind torn and distracted with various and contending Passions, distressed with Doubts, and wandring in a kind of Twilight, which presented her only Objects of different Degrees of Horrour, and where black Despair close...

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1753

One may "stoop, with Locke, the Gleams of Thought to scan, / The Infant's dawning Ray, the Noon of Man"

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)

Date: 1755

"Thou sun, of this great world both eye and soul"

— Milton [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1755

Despair may darken the imagination

— Sidney [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1755

"Dim, as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars / To lonely, weary, wand'ring travellers, / Is reason to the soul."

— Dryden [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1755

"The sense is like the sun; for the sun seals up the globe of heaven, and opens the globe of earth: so the sense doth obscure heavenly things, and reveals earthly things"

— Bacon [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1755

"That it will immediately become popular I have not promised to myself: a few wild blunders, and risible absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity was ever free, may for a time furnish folly with laughter, and harden ignorance in contempt; but useful diligence will at last prevail, and...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1755

"Thou, superior to the Frowns / Of Fate, can'st pour thy Sunshine o'er the Soul, / And brighten Woe to Rapture!"

— Brown, John (1715-1766)