Date: 1754
"What is the juxta-position of ideas? what is that chain which connects, by intermediate ideas that are the links of it, ideas that are remote, but figurative stile?"
preview | full record— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)
Date: 1754
"When they have really such ideas in their minds, they must remember too that figures and comparisons are varnish still. It must not be used to alter the intellectual picture, it must only serve to give a greater lustre, and to make it better seen."
preview | full record— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)
Date: 1754
"Now the application of this corporeal image to what passes in the mind, or to the action of the mind when we meditate on various subjects, or on many distinct parts of the same subjects and when we communicate these thoughts to one another, sometimes with greater, and sometimes with less agitati...
preview | full record— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)
Date: 1754
"But a nature capable of sensation, that is of perception, that is of thought (to say nothing of spontaneous motion, of memory, nor of the passions) cannot be incapable of another mode of thinking, any more than finite extension can be capable of one figure alone, or a piece of wax that receives ...
preview | full record— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)
Date: 1755
"Ideas of the same race, though not exactly alike, are sometimes so little different, that no words can express the dissimilitude, though the mind easily perceives it, when they are exhibited together; and sometimes there is such a confusion of acceptations, that discernment is wearied, and disti...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1755
"The imperfect sense of some examples I lamented, but could not remedy, and hope they will be compensated by innumerable passages selected with propriety, and preserved with exactness; some shining with sparks of imagination, and some replete with treasures of wisdom."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1755
"Those who have much leisure to think, will always be enlarging the stock of ideas, and every increase of knowledge, whether real or fancied, will produce new words, or combinations of words."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1755
"When the mind is unchained from necessity, it will range after convenience; when it is left at large in the fields of speculation, it will shift opinions; as any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same ...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1755
"That it will immediately become popular I have not promised to myself: a few wild blunders, and risible absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity was ever free, may for a time furnish folly with laughter, and harden ignorance in contempt; but useful diligence will at last prevail, and...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: October 21, 1758.
"This counsel has been often given with serious dignity, and often received with appearance of conviction; but, as very few can search deep into their own minds without meeting what they wish to hide from themselves, scarce any man persists in cultivating such disagreeable acquaintance, but draws...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)