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"

— 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...

— 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."

— 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."

— 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."

— 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."

— 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."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790, 1794

"How many fine-spun threads of reasoning would my wandering thoughts have broken; and how difficult should I have found it to arrange arguments and inferences in the cells of my brain!"

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1791

"The dissipation of thought, of which you complain, is nothing more than the vacillation of a mind suspended between different motives, and changing its direction as any motive gains or loses strength."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: December 10, 1790; 1791

"But I am sure that mechanic excellence invigorated and emboldened his mind to carry Painting into the regions of Poetry, and to emulate that Art in its most adventurous flights."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)