Date: 1712
"And tho' these Spirits, which obsequious go, / Know not the Paths, thro' which they ready flow, / Nor can our Mind instruct them in their Way, / Of all their Roads as ignorant, as they; / Yet seldom erring they attain their End, / And reach that single Part, which we intend."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1712
"How Spirits, which for Sense and Motion serve, / Unguided find the perforated Nerve. / Thro' ev'ry dark Recess pursue their Flight, / Unconscious of the Road and void of Sight, / Yet certain of the End still guide their Motions right."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1723
"Thou see'st from whence her Colours Fancy takes, / Of what Materials she her Pencil makes / By which she paints her Scenes with such Applause, / And in the Brain ten thousand Landskips draws."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1723
"Thou know'st the downy Chains that softly bind / Our slumb'ring Sense, when waiting Objects find / No Avenue left open to the Mind."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: Tuesday, March 27, 1750
"The task of an author is, either to teach what is not known, or to recommend known truths by his manner of adorning them; either to let new light in upon the mind, and open new scenes to the prospect, or to vary the dress and situation of common objects, so as to give them fresh grace and more p...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Saturday, September 15, 1750
"The first effect of this meditation is, that it furnishes a new employment for the mind, and engages the passions on remoter objects; as kings have sometimes freed themselves from a subject too haughty to be governed and too powerful to be crushed, by posting him in a distant province, till his ...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Tuesday, October 2, 1750
"[T]hough I do not pretend to give laws to the legislators of mankind, or to limit the range of those powerful minds that carry light and heat through all the regions of knowledge, yet I have long thought, that the greatest part of those who lose themselves in studies by which I have not found th...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Tuesday, January 22, 1751
"He often perceives himself transported, he knows not how, to distant tracts of thought, and returns to his first object as from a dream, without knowing when he forsook it, or how long he has been abstracted from it."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: August 27, 1751
"The painted vales of imagination are deserted, and our intellectual activity is exercised in winding through the labyrinths of fallacy, and toiling with firm and cautious steps up the narrow tracks of demonstration."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1755
"When the mind is unchained from necessity, it will range after convenience; when it is left at large in the fields of speculation, it will shift opinions; as any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same ...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)