Date: Tuesday, June 12, 1750

"But timidity is a disease of the mind more obstinate and fatal; for a man once persuaded that any impediment is insuperable, has given it, with respect to himself, that strength and weight which it had not before."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: August 13, 1750

"Beings conscious of a frame of mind originally diseased, as all the human race has cause to be, must use the regimen of a stricter self- government."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, August 28, 1750

"The passions are diseases indeed, but they necessarily direct us to their proper cure."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, September 15, 1750

"But this medicine of the mind is like many remedies applied to the body, of which, though we see the effects, we are unacquainted with the manner of operation, and of which, therefore, some, who are unwilling to suppose any thing out of the reach of their own sagacity, have been inclined to doub...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, November 27, 1750

"I had formed schemes which I cannot execute, I had supposed events which do not come to pass, and the rest of my life must pass in craving solicitude, unless you can find some remedy for a mind, corrupted with an inveterate disease of wishing, and unable to think on any thing but wants, which re...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, December 1, 1750

"No disease of the mind can more fatally disable it from benevolence, the chief duty of social beings, than ill-humour or peevishness; for though it breaks not out in paroxysms of outrage, nor bursts into clamour, turbulence, and bloodshed, it wears out happiness by slow corrosion, and small inju...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, December 13, 1750

"Thus far the mind resembles the body, but here the similitude is at an end."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, April 14, 1750

"[W]e are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude; but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favour, and reason by degrees submits to absurdity,...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, April 14, 1750

"In this disease of the soul, it is of the utmost importance to apply remedies at the beginning."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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)