Date: 1780

"My Potter stamp on me thy clay, Thy only stamp of love!"

— Wesley, John (1703-1791)

Date: September, 1781

"To think in this manner is to augment our existence, as instead of reckoning a third of our life mere waste, we habituate ourselves to attend to the result of our hours past in Sleep, and to recover out of the mass of thought produced during that period, very often amusement, and sometimes usefu...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1781

"The Church-yard abounds with images which find a mirrour in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1781

"He [Young] plays, indeed, only on the surface of life; he never penetrates the recesses of the mind, and therefore the whole power of his poetry is exhausted by a single perusal; his conceits please only when they surprise."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: April, 1783

"He gives a curious system of the instrument of Memory, which he says is the last or inner ventricle of the brain, whereas the first or outer ventricles are the instruments of perception or thought. He affirms that, according as you hurt one or other of thole instruments, you destroy either of th...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: April, 1783

"And we must be content to rest upon the surface without straining to pierce into causes which are hidden from us, and which have hitherto mocked the attempts of impatient philosophers. We should resolve to wait till a longer fathom line is granted us, and then we shall be able to sound depths wh...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: April, 1783

"How is it that ideas ripen in the mind, so that a man shall go to bed with a very imperfect possession of what he has laboured to get by heart, and shall awake in the morning able to repeat it with distinctness and facility?"

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: April, 1783

"Has he been at work all night without being conscious of it. Have other spirits been making impressions on his sensorium. Are there faculties in the mind quite separate one from another, which, like the eyes of Argus, may some of them be awake while others are asleep, and is the great faculty of...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: April, 1783

"Shakespeare makes Macbeth solemnly but hopelessly ask the physician if he has any remedy to wear out direful traces from the brain."

— 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)