Date: Saturday, May 7, to Tuesday, May 10, 1709
"The next, as I said, I went to was a common swearer: never was creature so puzzled as myself when I came first to view his brain; half of it was worn out, and filled up with mere expletives, that had nothing to do with any other parts of the texture."
preview | full record— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)
Date: Saturday, May 7, to Tuesday, May 10, 1709
"When we first take our place about a man, the receptacles of the pericranium are immediately searched. In his, I found no one ordinary trace of thinking; but strong passion, violent desires, and a continued series of different changes, had torn it to pieces."
preview | full record— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)
Date: 1710, 1714
"There is no way of estimating manners or apprising the different humours, fancies, passions, and apprehensions of others without first taking an inventory of the same kind of goods within ourselves and surveying our domestic fund."
preview | full record— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)
Date: 1710, 1714
"For without this Understanding, the Historian's Judgment will be very defective; the Politician's Views very narrow, and chimerical; and the Poet's Brain, however stock'd with Fiction, will be but poorly furnish'd; as in the sequel we shall make appear."
preview | full record— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)
Date: 1710, 1714
"There is no way of estimating Manners, or apprizing the different Humours, Fancys, Passions and Apprehensions of others, without first taking an Inventory of the same kind of Goods within ourselves, and surveying our domestick Fund."
preview | full record— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)
Date: From Thursd. Febr. 9. to Saturd. Febr. 11. 1710
"The Mind of Man in a long Life will become a Magazine of Wisdom or Folly, and will consequently discharge it self in something impertinent or improving."
preview | full record— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)
Date: From Saturd. March 25. to Tuesd. March 28. 1710
"The Memory of an old Visiting-Lady is so filled with Gloves, Silks, and Ribands, that I can look upon it as nothing else but a Toy-shop."
preview | full record— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)
Date: Saturday, March 17, 1711
"When Women are thus perpetually dazling one anothers Imaginations, and filling their Heads with nothing but Colours, it is no Wonder that they are more attentive to the superficial Parts of Life, than the solid and substantial Blessings of it."
preview | full record— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)
Date: Friday, March 30, 1711
"When I am in a serious Humour, I very often walk by my self in Westminster Abbey; where the Gloominess of the Place, and the Use to which it is applied, with the Solemnity of the Building, and the Condition of the People who lye in it, are apt to fill the Mind with a kind of Melancholy, or rathe...
preview | full record— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)
Date: Friday, April 20, 1711
"Among the several Artifices which are put in Practice by the Poets to fill the Minds of an Audience with Terror, the first Place is due to Thunder and Lightning, which are often made use of at the Descending of a God, or the Rising of a Ghost, at the Vanishing of a Devil, or at the Death of a Ty...
preview | full record— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)