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: 1785

"'Twixt shame and passion floats the struggling mind, / To Virtue now, and now to vice inclin'd, / This frowns refusal, that persuades to yield, / Till Reason falls, and Passion takes the field."

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: 1786

"Perhaps of my policy to, in confessing at once, what my wandering ideas, and disjointed style would soon have discover'd."

— Lee, Harriet (1757/8-1851)

Date: 1788

"These various movements of her mind were not commented on, nor were the luxuriant shoots restrained by culture."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1788

"Thro' the mind of Delamere, a thousand confused ideas rapidly passed."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1788

"The idea which seemed to press most painfully on her mind, was the blemish which the purity of her character must sustain by her being so long absent with Delamere--a blemish which she knew could hardly ever be removed but by her returning as his wife."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1788

"But the moment the suddenness of his passion gave way to reflection, the tumult of his mind subsided, and he thought it must be an artifice of his mother's to separate him from Emmeline."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)