Date: Tuesday, November 19, 1751

"We frequently fall into errour and folly, not because the true principles of action are not known, but because, for a time, they are not remembered; and he may therefore be justly numbered among the benefactors of mankind, who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be e...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, February 9, 1751

"The general resemblance of the sound to the sense is to be found in every language which admits of poetry, in every author whose force of fancy enables him to impress images strongly on his own mind, and whose choice and variety of language readily supply him with just representations."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, January 22, 1751

"[B]ut we range delighted and jocund through the gay apartments of the palace, because nothing is impressed by them on the mind but joy and festivity."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, February 29, 1752

"It was now day, and fear was so strongly impressed on his mind, that he could sleep no more."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: February 4, 1752

"My parents, though otherwise not great philosophers, knew the force of early education, and took care that the blank of my understanding should be filled with impressions of the value of money."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1754

"As the mind does not act till it is rouzed into action by external objects; so when it does act, it acts conformably to the suggestions it receives from these impressions, and takes with its first ideas the hints how to multiply, and improve them."

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1754

"But a nature capable of sensation, that is of perception, that is of thought (to say nothing of spontaneous motion, of memory, nor of the passions) cannot be incapable of another mode of thinking, any more than finite extension can be capable of one figure alone, or a piece of wax that receives ...

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: September 15, 1759

"Where there is no striking disparity, it is difficult to know of two which remembers most, and still more difficult to discover which read with greater attention, which has renewed the first impression by more frequent repetitions, or by what accidental combination of ideas either mind might hav...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"The way to be happy is to live according to nature, in obedience to that universal and unalterable law with which every heart is originally impressed; which is not written on it by precept, but engraven by destiny, not instilled by education, but infused at our nativity."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"From their children, if they have less to fear, they have less also to hope, and they lose, without equivalent the joys of early love and the convenience of uniting with manners pliant, and minds susceptible of new impressions, which might wear away their dissimilitudes by long cohabitation, as ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)