Date: October 21, 1758.

"This counsel has been often given with serious dignity, and often received with appearance of conviction; but, as very few can search deep into their own minds without meeting what they wish to hide from themselves, scarce any man persists in cultivating such disagreeable acquaintance, but draws...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: September 15, 1759

"In the mythological pedigree of Learning, Memory is made the mother of the Muses by which the masters of ancient Wisdom, perhaps, meant to shew the necessity of storing the mind copiously with true notions, before the imagination should be suffered to form fictions or collect embellishments; for...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: September 15, 1759

"If the repositories of thought are already full, what can they receive?"

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: September 1, 1759.

"If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur, and every recurrence would reinstate them in their former place."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: September 1, 1759.

"The mind cannot retire from its enemy into total vacancy, or turn aside from one object but by passing to another."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: January 12, 1760

"To fix deeply in the mind the principles of science, to settle their limitations, and deduce the long succession of their consequences; to comprehend the whole compass of complicated systems, with all the arguments, objections, and solutions, and to reposite in the intellectual treasury the numb...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1762

"We might spend our time in going from place to place, where none wish to see us except they find a deficiency at the card table, perpetually living among those, whose vacant minds are ever seeking after pleasures foreign to their own tastes, and pursue joys which vanish as soon as possessed."

— Scott [née Robinson], Sarah (1720-1795)

Date: 1762

"To me how tasteless ev’ry Scene of Joy, / The vacant Heart by happy Impulse feels / While mine, which Thoughts of genuine Grief employ, / From chearful Crowds to drear Retirement steals."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)

"A vast stock of ideas are treasured up in the memory, which it easily produces on various occasions."

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)

Date: 1764, 1773

"Restore thy dear idea to my breast, / The rich deposit shall the shrine secure."

— Shenstone, William (1714-1763)