Date: 1783
"The human brain is a bodily substance; and sensible and permanent impressions made upon it must so far resemble those made on sand by the foot, or on wax by the seal, as to have certain shape, length, breadth, and deepness"
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1783
"What toil and perseverance, in cultivating the bodily powers, must it require, to qualify the tumbler for those feats of activity, with which he astonishes mankind! [... ]Were we to take equal pains in the improvement of our intellectual and moral nature, which are surely not less susceptible of...
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1785
"To this it is owing, that, in ancient languages, the word which denotes the soul, is that which properly signifies breath or air."
preview | full record— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)
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."
preview | full record— 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"
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— 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.'"
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— 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 ...
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1791
"It seems as if his mind had ceased to struggle with the disease; for he grows fat upon it."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)