Date: 1751

"In this corps he remained three years, during which, he had no opportunity of seeing actual service, except at the affair of Glensheel; and this life of insipid quiet, must have hung heavy upon a youth of M---'s active disposition, had not he found exercise for the mind, in'reading books of amus...

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: September 7, 1751

"The mental disease of the present generation, is impatience of study, contempt of the great masters of ancient wisdom, and a disposition to rely wholly upon unassisted genius and natural sagacity."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, February 12, 1751

"There are many diseases both of the body and mind, which it is far easier to prevent than to cure, and therefore I hope you will think me employed in an office not useless either to learning or virtue, if I describe the symptoms of an intellectual malady, which, though at first it seizes only th...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, January 22, 1751

"It is, perhaps, not impossible to promote the cure of this mental malady, by close application to some new study, which may pour in fresh ideas, and keep curiosity in perpetual motion."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, January 22, 1751

"This is a formidable and obstinate disease of the intellect, of which, when it has once become radicated by time, the remedy is one of the hardest tasks of reason and of virtue."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: August 27, 1751

"It had been a task worthy of the moral philosophers to have considered with equal care [as physicians have traced in the body the "various periods of the constitution"] the climactericks of the mind; to have pointed out the time at which every passion begins and ceases to predominate, and noted ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1752, 1790

A mind may be "soft, tho' bright, like her own eyes, / Discreetly witty, gayly wise."

— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787)

Date: 1752

"Worse than the other--Whom, thus robb'd of Pow'r. / His former Passions fatally devour!"

— Duncombe, John (1729-1786) [pseud.]

Date: 1752

"Well! does that make you wise, / Or open on your Follies, Reason's Eyes!"

— Duncombe, John (1729-1786) [pseud.]

Date: Tuesday, February 25, 1752

"The eye of the mind, like that of the body, can only extend its view to new objects, by losing sight of those which are now before it."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)