Date: Tuesday, August 7, 1750

"[T]hey seem always to be fully employed, or to be completely at ease without employment, to feel few intellectual miseries or pleasures, and to have no exuberance of understanding to lay out upon curiosity or caprice, but to have their minds exactly adapted to their bodies, with few other ideas ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, August 7, 1750

"But the images which memory presents are of a stubborn and untractable nature, the objects of remembrance have already existed, and left their signature behind them impressed upon the mind, so as to defy all attempts of rasure or of change."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, August 28, 1750

"Yet it too often happens that sorrow, thus lawfully entering, gains such a firm possession of the mind, that it is not afterwards to be ejected; the mournful ideas, first violently impressed and afterwards willingly received, so much engross the attention, as to predominate in every thought, to ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, September 4, 1750

"But it must be strongly impressed upon our minds that virtue is not to be pursued as one of the means to fame, but fame to be accepted as the only recompense which mortals can bestow on virtue; to be accepted with complacence, but not sought with eagerness."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, April 3, 1750

"He that enlarges his curiosity after the works of nature, demonstrably multiplies the inlets to happiness; and, therefore, the younger part of my readers, to whom I dedicate this vernal speculation, must excuse me for calling upon them, to make use at once of the spring of the year, and the spri...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, September 22, 1750

"When a friend is carried to his grave, we at once find excuses for every weakness, and palliations of every fault; we recollect a thousand endearments, which before glided off our minds without impression, a thousand favours unrepaid, a thousand duties unperformed, and wish, vainly wish, for his...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, April 10, 1750

"The great task of him who conducts his life by the precepts of religion, is to make the future predominate over the present, to impress upon his mind so strong a sense of the importance of obedience to the divine will, of the value of the reward promised to virtue, and the terrours of the punish...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, November 20, 1750

"Of this kind is the well known and well attested position, 'that life is short,' which may be heard among mankind by an attentive auditor, many times a day, but which never yet within my reach of observation left any impression upon the mind."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, April 6, 1751

"He, therefore, that feels himself alarmed by his conscience, anxious for the attainment of a better state, and afflicted by the memory of his past faults, may justly conclude, that the great work of repentance is begun, and hope by retirement and prayer, the natural and religious means of streng...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, November 19, 1751

"We frequently fall into errour and folly, not because the true principles of action are not known, but because, for a time, they are not remembered; and he may therefore be justly numbered among the benefactors of mankind, who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be e...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)