Date: April, 1778

"A Hypochondriack Preacher, would, I am sensible, be an anomalous character; for whatever part of his sermon should appear not quite intelligible, or at all unpleasant to his auditors, they might very fairly, though perhaps not very justly impute to the gloomy disease of his mind."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: April, 1783

"If impressions are made upon some substance in the mind, may not forgetfulness of them be only that the perceptive faculty of the soul is turned to other objects, while these still remain ready to be perceived whenever the 'mind's eye,' glances upon them?"

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: April, 1783

"An Hypochondriack is subject to forgetfulness, which may be owing to another cause; that there is a darkness in his mind, or that its perceptive eye is injured and weak at times."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: April, 1783

"Has he been at work all night without being conscious of it. Have other spirits been making impressions on his sensorium. Are there faculties in the mind quite separate one from another, which, like the eyes of Argus, may some of them be awake while others are asleep, and is the great faculty of...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"I saw in this nobleman the best dispositions and best principles; and I saw him, in my mind's eye, to be the representative of the ancient Boyds of Kilmarnock."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1791

"But a convert from Popery to Protestantism, gives up so much of what he has held as sacred as any thing that he retains; there is so much laceration of mind in such a conversion, that it can hardly be sincere and lasting"

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1791

"He [Johnson] entered upon a curious discussion of the difference between intuition and sagacity; one being immediate in its effect, the other requiring a circuitous process; one he observed was the eye of the mind, the other the nose of the mind."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1791

"A young gentleman present took up the argument against him, and maintained that no man ever thinks of the nose of the mind, not adverting that though that figurative sense seems strange to us, as very unusual, it is truly not more forced than Hamlet's 'In my mind's eye, Horatio.'"

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1791

"The analogy between body and mind is very general, and the parallel will hold as to their food, as well as any other particular."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1791

"That his own diseased imagination should have so far deceived him, is strange; but it is stranger still that some of his friends should have given credit to his groundless opinion, when they had such undoubted proofs that it was totally fallacious; though it is by no means surprising that those ...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)