Date: Tuesday, March 10, 1752

"It is not sufficient to maintain the first vigour; for excellence loses its effect upon the mind by custom, as light after a time ceases to dazzle."

— 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...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1755

"Thou, superior to the Frowns / Of Fate, can'st pour thy Sunshine o'er the Soul, / And brighten Woe to Rapture!"

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: March 1756

"The thought-kindling light, / Thy prime production, darts upon my mind / Its vivifying beams, my heart illumines, / And fills my soul with gratitude and Thee."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: 1758

"While in your hearts the flames of love may burn, / To dress the vault, like lamps in sacred urn."

— Parnell, Thomas (1679-1718)

Date: 1759

"He compared reason to the sun, of which the light is constant, uniform, and lasting; and fancy to a meteor, of bright but transitory lustre, irregular in its motion, and delusive in its direction."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1760

"Dim burns the Lamp of Life; this Breast heaves slow; / My Soul shall soon the last sad Journey go."

— Langhorne,William (1721-1772)

Date: 1760-7

"[A]nd what is more astonishing, he had never in his whole life the least light or spark of subtilty struck into his mind, by one single lecture upon Crackenthorp or Burgersdicius, or any Dutch logician or commentator."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

Wit and judgment are two luminaries and "their irradiations are suffered from time to time to shine down upon us."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

Ideas "follow and succeed one another in our minds at certain distances, just like the images in the inside of a lanthorn turned round by the heat of a candle."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)