Date: September 1, 1759.
"The incursions of troublesome thoughts are often violent and importunate; and it is not easy to a mind accustomed to their inroads to expel them immediately by putting better images into motion; but this enemy of quiet is above all others weakened by every defeat; the reflection which has been o...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: September 1, 1759.
"Employment is the great instrument of intellectual dominion."
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: December 29, 1759
"If the senses were feasted with perpetual pleasure, they would always keep the mind in subjection."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: December 29, 1759
"But as we advance forward into the crowds of life, innumerable delights sollicit our inclinations, and innumerable cares distract our attention; the time of youth is passed in noisy frolicks; manhood is led on from hope to hope, and from project to project; the dissoluteness of pleasure, the ine...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: December 29, 1759
"In childhood, while our minds are yet unoccupied, religion is impressed upon them, and the first years of almost all who have been well educated are passed in a regular discharge of the duties of piety."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1759
"Their grief, however, like their joy, was transient; every thing floated in their mind unconnected with the past or future, so that one desire easily gave way to another, as a second stone cast into the water effaces and confounds the circles of the first."
preview | full record— 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...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1765
"And in this I am warranted by the example of ancient Rome; where, as Cicero informs us, the very boys were obliged to learn the twelve tables by heart, as a carmen necessarium or indispensable lesson, to imprint on their tender minds an early knowledge of the laws and constitution of their count...
preview | full record— Blackstone, William (1723-1780)
Date: September, 1766
"Deliver me, gracious Lord from the bondage of doubt and from all evil customs, and take not from me thy Holy Spirit, but enable me so to spend my remaining days, that by performing thy will I may promote thy glory, and grant that after the troubles and disappointments of this mortal state I may ...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)