Date: Saturday, June 21, 1712

"The Colours paint themselves on the Fancy, with very little Attention of Thought or Application of Mind in the Beholder."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Saturday, June 21, 1712

"[Sight] fills the Mind with the largest Variety of Ideas, converses with its Objects at the greatest Distance, and continues the longest in Action without being tired or satiated with its proper Enjoyments."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Saturday, June 21, 1712

"We cannot indeed have a single Image in the Fancy that did not make its first Entrance through the Sight; but we have the Power of retaining, altering and compounding those Images, which we have once received, into all the varieties of Picture and Vision that are most agreeable to the Imaginatio...

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Saturday, June 21, 1712

"For this Reason Sir Francis Bacon, in his Essay upon Health, has not thought it improper to prescribe to his Reader a Poem or a Prospect, where he particularly dissuades him from knotty and subtile Disquisitions, and advises him to pursue Studies that fill the Mind with splendid and illustrious ...

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Saturday, June 28, 1712

"The Sett of Ideas, which we received from such a Prospect or Garden, having entered the Mind at the same time, have a Sett of Traces belonging to them in the Brain, bordering very near upon one another; when, therefore, any one of these Ideas arises in the Imagination, and consequently dispatche...

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Saturday, June 28, 1712

"By this means they awaken other Ideas of the same Sett, which immediately determine a new Dispatch of Spirits, that in the same manner open other Neighbouring Traces, till at last the whole Sett of them is blown up, and the whole Prospect or Garden flourishes in the Imagination."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: 1713

Thus o'er the dying Lamp th'unsteady Flame / Hang's quiv'ring on a Point, leap's off by Fits, / And fall's again, as loath to quit its Hold / --Thou must not go, my Soul still hover's o'er thee / And can't get loose."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: September 15, 1713

"These are generally persons who, in Shakespear's phrase, are worn and hackney'd in the Ways of Men; whose imaginations are grown Callous, and have lost all those delicate Sentiments which are natural to Minds that are innocent and undepraved."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: August 15, 1713

"A Good Conscience is to the Soul what Health is to the Body; It preserves a constant Ease and Serenity within us, and more than countervails all the Calamities and Afflictions which can possibly befall us."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: 1713

"Now, Marcus, now, thy Virtue's on the Proof: / Put forth thy utmost Strength, work ev'ry Nerve, / And call up all thy Father in thy Soul: / To quell the Tyrant Love, and guard thy Heart / On this weak Side, where most our Nature fails, / Would be a Conquest worthy Cato's Son."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)