Date: w. 1764, 1953

"My mind is like an air-pump which receives and ejects ideas with wonderful facility."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: April, 1783

"When we talk of a storehouse of our ideas, we are only forming an imagination of something similar to an enclosed portion of space in which material objects are reposited. But who ever actually saw this storehouse, or can have any clear perception of it when he endeavours by thinking closely to ...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: April, 1783

"As, however, his penetration could not but see that all this is absolutely incompatible with a spiritual substance which mind is, he, immediately without any interruption or preparation whatever, proceeds very quietly, though most effectually, to contradict what he has been assuming, and to anni...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: April, 1783

"And yet in my own mind I am not sure but there may be such, an analogy between the nature of spirit and that of matter, as to admit of a receptacle of ideas."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"He [Johnson] said, he did not grudge Burke's being the first man in the House of Commons, for he was the first man every where; but he grudged that a fellow who makes no figure in company, and has a mind as narrow as the neck of a vinegar cruet, should make a figure in the House of Commons, mere...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"His mind was so full of imagery, that he might have been perpetually a poet."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"Meals are wished for from the cravings of vacuity of mind, as well as from the desire of eating."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"I have often experienced, that scenes through which a man has passed, improve by lying in the memory: they grow mellow."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"I answered I would not; and he applauded my setting such a value on an accession of new images in my mind."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)