Date: 1783
"While we listen to a discourse, or read a book, how often , in spite of all our care, does the fancy wander, and present thoughts quite different from those we have in view! "
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1783
"Elegant speculations are sometimes found to float on the surface of the mind, while bad passions possess the interior regions of the heart."
preview | full record— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)
Date: October, 1784
"HUMAN thoughts are like the planetary system, where many are fixed, and many wander, and many continue for ever unintelligible; or rather like meteors, which generally lose their substance with their lustre."
preview | full record— Anonymous
Date: 1785
"[W]hen the mind is absent, and the thoughts are wandering to something else than what is passing in the place in which we are, we are often miserable"
preview | full record— Paley, William (1743-1805)
Date: 1785
"BOSWELL. 'But, sir,'tis like walking up and down a hill; one man will naturally do the one better than the other. A hare will run up a hill best, from her fore-legs being short; a dog down.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, sir; that is from mechanical powers. If you make mind mechanical, you may argue in that ma...
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1785
"Dr Johnson said, that I was right in thinking them unhappy; for that they had not enough to keep their minds in motion."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1785
"He looked coolly and deliberately through all the gradations: my warm imagination jumped from the barren sands to the splendid dinner and brilliant company."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1785
"To see Dr Samuel Johnson lying in that bed, in the isle of Sky, in the house of Miss Flora Macdonald, struck me with such a group of ideas as it is not easy for words to describe, as they passed through the mind."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1790
"Their view calls off his attention from his own view; and his breast is, in some measure, becalmed the moment they come into his presence. This effect is produced instantaneously and, as it were, mechanically; but, with a weak man, it is not of long continuance."
preview | full record— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)
Date: 1790
"Without the restraint which this principle imposes, every passion would, upon most occasions, rush headlong, if I may say so, to its own gratification."
preview | full record— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)