Date: 1785

"BOSWELL. 'But, sir,'tis like walking up and down a hill; one man will naturally do the one better than the other. A hare will run up a hill best, from her fore-legs being short; a dog down.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, sir; that is from mechanical powers. If you make mind mechanical, you may argue in that ma...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"Dr Johnson said, that I was right in thinking them unhappy; for that they had not enough to keep their minds in motion."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"He looked coolly and deliberately through all the gradations: my warm imagination jumped from the barren sands to the splendid dinner and brilliant company."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"To see Dr Samuel Johnson lying in that bed, in the isle of Sky, in the house of Miss Flora Macdonald, struck me with such a group of ideas as it is not easy for words to describe, as they passed through the mind."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1790

"Their view calls off his attention from his own view; and his breast is, in some measure, becalmed the moment they come into his presence. This effect is produced instantaneously and, as it were, mechanically; but, with a weak man, it is not of long continuance."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"Without the restraint which this principle imposes, every passion would, upon most occasions, rush headlong, if I may say so, to its own gratification."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1791

"The dissipation of thought, of which you complain, is nothing more than the vacillation of a mind suspended between different motives, and changing its direction as any motive gains or loses strength."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1791

"I cannot allow any fragment whatever that floats in my memory concerning the great subject of this work to be lost."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1809, 1812

"Or through some fairy palace fancy roves, / And studs, with ruby lamps, the fretted roof / Or paints with every colour of the bow / Spotless parterres, all freakt with snow-white flowers, / Flowers that no archetype in nature own."

— Graham, James (1765-1811)