Date: Saturday March 24, 1750

"Those who have proceeded so far as to appeal to the tribunal of succeeding times, are not likely to be cured of their infatuation; but all endeavours ought to be used for the prevention of a disease, for which, when it has attained its height, perhaps no remedy will be found in the gardens of ph...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, November 3, 1750

"The philosophers having found an easy victory over those desires which we produce in ourselves, and which terminate in some imaginary state of happiness unknown and unattainable, proceeded to make further inroads upon the heart, and attacked at last our senses and our instincts."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, November 20, 1750

"Yet, if we consider the conduct of those sententious philosophers, it will often be found, that they repeat these aphorisms, merely because they have somewhere heard them, because they have nothing else to say, or because they think veneration gained by such appearances of wisdom, but that no id...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1751, 1777

"It is sufficient for our present purpose, if it be allowed, what surely, without the greatest absurdity, cannot be disputed, that there is some benevolence, however small, infused into our bosom; some spark of friendship for human kind; some particle of the dove, kneaded into our frame, along wi...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751, 1777

"Another spring of our constitution, that brings a great addition of force to moral sentiment, is, the love of fame; which rules, with such uncontrolled authority, in all generous minds, and is often the grand object of all their designs and undertakings."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751, 1777

"The one [reason] discovers objects, as they really stand in nature, without addition or diminution: The other [taste] has a productive faculty, and gilding or staining all natural objects with the colours, borrowed from internal sentiment, raises, in a manner, a new creation."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751

"True philosophy was not known till that time; and it is but justice to say, that commencing from the last year of Cardinal Richelieu, and proceeding to those which immediately succeeded the death of Louis XIV. there came to pass in our arts, in our minds, in our manners, as well as in our govern...

— Arouet, François-Marie [known as Voltaire] (1694-1778)

Date: 1751

"If motives be of very different kinds, with regard to strength and influence, which we feel to be the case; it is involved in the very idea of the strongest motive, that it must have the strongest effect in determining the mind. This can no more be doubted of, than that, in a balance, the greate...

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1751

"In other cases, where the field of choice is wider, and where opposite motives counterbalance and work against each other, the mind fluctuates for a while, and feels itself more loose: but, in the end, must as necessarily be determined to the side of the most powerful motive, as the balance, aft...

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1751

"The laws of mind, and the laws of matter, are in this respect perfectly similar; tho', in making the comparison, we are apt to deceive ourselves."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)