Date: 1607

"[Y]our continuance after in all studious actions, constancy in your fauours and kind disposition (for I must needs say as hee of Augustus -- 'Rarus tu quidem ad recipiendas amicitias, ad retinendas vero constantissimus') these incited mee to cause that which as a sparke lay shrowded in embers in...

— Walkington, Thomas (b. c. 1575, d. 1621)

Date: 1632

"Looke as it is with a Gold smith that melteth the metall that he is to make a vessell of, if after the melting thereof, there follow a cooling, it had beene as good it had never beene melted, it is as hard, haply harder, as unfit, haply unfitter, then it was before to make vessell of; but after ...

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)

Date: 1651

"Many erroneous opinions are about the essence and original of [the rational soul]; whether it be fire, as Zeno held; harmony, as Aristoxenus; number, as Xenocrates; whether it be organical, or inorganical; seated in the brain, heart or blood; mortal or immortal; how it comes into the body."

— Burton, Robert (1577-1640)

Date: Tuesday, May 15, 1750

"That the maxim of Epictetus is founded on just observation will easily be granted, when we reflect, how that vehemence of eagerness after the common objects of pursuit is kindled in our minds."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, July 3, 1750

"hey are then at the uttermost verge of wickedness, and may die without having that light rekindled in their minds, which their own pride and contumacy have extinguished."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: November 15, 1751

"My life was divided between the care of providing topicks for the entertainment of my company, and that of collecting company worthy to be entertained; for I soon found, that wit, like every other power, has its boundaries; that its success depends upon the aptitude of others to receive impressi...

— 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."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1757

"But when it is such a truth, as I do not only hear, but feel; and it comes home to my own very sense and experience: shall any sophistical reasonings wrangle me out of it; what though I cannot resolve the question, [GREEK CHARACTERS] whence the evil was derived: whether from the soul formed in t...

— Jenks, Benjamin (bap. 1648, d. 1724)

Date: January 27, 1759.

"That it is vain to shrink from what cannot be avoided, and to hide that from ourselves which must some time be found, is a truth which we all know, but which all neglect, and perhaps none more than the speculative reasoner, whose thoughts are always from home, whose eye wanders over life, whose ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1662, 1762

"My heart was hot within me; and while I was thus musing the fire kindled: and at the last I spake with my tongue."

— The Church of England