Date: 1752

"You know, my Dear, how gloomy the Prospect was Yesterday before our Eyes, how inevitable Ruin stared me in the Face; and the dreadful Idea of having entailed Beggary on my Amelia and her Posterity racked my Mind."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

"By the latter I shall see whether you can keep a Secret; and if it is no otherwise material, it will be a wholesome Exercise to your Mind; for the Practice of any Virtue is a kind of mental Exercise, and serves to maintain the Health and Vigour of the Soul."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1753

The heart may be softened or wounded

— Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)

Date: Tuesday, March 20, 1753

"[I]t is to be regretted, therefore, that he did not exercise his mind less, and his body more: since by this means, it is highly probable, that though he would not then have astonished with the blaze of a comet, he would yet have shone with the permanent radiance of a fixed star."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, October 2, 1753

"Every other passion is alike simple and limited, if it be considered only with regard to the breast which it inhabits; the anatomy of the mind, as that of the body, must perpetually exhibit the same appearances; and though by the continued industry of successive inquirers, new movements will be ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1754

"Mr. Locke, who has made a more exact dissection of the human mind than any man before him, declares he gained all his knowledge from consideration of himself."

— Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley [née Lady Mary Pierrepont] (1689-1762)

Date: 1754

"[I]f Knowledge had broke in upon [Adam] too fast, it would have overwhelm'd, and depress'd him; so that, as in the Case of some intolerable Load laid upon the Body, his Mind must have sunk under the Weight of it"

— Holloway, Benjamin (1690/1-1759)

Date: 1754

"How you wound my soul by the supposition!"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: January, 1754; 1791

"Survey the magnet's sympathetic love, / That wooes the yielding needle; contemplate / Th'attractive amber's power, invisible / Ev'n to the mental eye."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: 1754

"I may with the same Naïvité remove the Veil from my mental as well as personal Imperfections; and expose them naked to the World."

— Hay, William (1695-1755)