Date: Saturday, November 3, 1750

"Some of these instructors of mankind have not contented themselves with checking the overflows of passion, and lopping the exuberance of desire, but have attempted to destroy the root as well as the branches; and not only to confine the mind within bounds, but to smooth it for ever by a dead calm."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, November 3, 1750

"Yet it cannot be with justice denied, that these men have been very useful monitors, and have left many proofs of strong reason, deep penetration, and accurate attention to the affairs of life, which it is now our business to separate from the foam of a boiling imagination, and to apply judiciou...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1751

"Chill Penury repressed their noble rage, / And froze the genial current of the soul."

— Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)

Date: 1751

Venus "Bids the warm heart with friendship glow, / Or melt in pity's softer flow; / In chains our boasted reason bind, / And rule at will th'impassion'd mind."

— Lennox, née Ramsay, (Barbara) Charlotte (1730/1?-1804)

Date: 1751, 1777

"They [cruel ideas] still haunt his solitary hours, damp his most aspiring thoughts, and show him, even to himself, in the most contemptible and most odious colours imaginable."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751

"If the brain, or some part of it, were not in a manner the fountain of sensation and motion, and more peculiarly the seat of the mind than the other bowels or members of the body; why should a slight inflammation of its membranes cause madness, or a small compression of it produce a palsy or apo...

— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Date: 1751

"In this particular case, we must either suppose, that the impressions, made by the stars on the retina, are suffocated and lost in those stronger ones made by the illuminated atmosphere, so as never to reach the sensorium in order to excite any idea in the mind, or that if they do reach the sens...

— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Date: Tuesday, March 5, 1751

"Thus, in a short time, I had heated my imagination to such a state of activity and ebullition, that upon every occasion it fumed away in bursts of wit, and evaporations of gaiety."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, March 30, 1751

"He that will not suffer himself to be discouraged by fancied impossibilities, may sometimes find his abilities invigorated by the necessity of exerting them in short intervals, as the force of a current is increased by the contraction of its channel."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1751

One may "pour forth the overflowings of his soul, and tell her that he neither could nor would survive her displeasure"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)