Date: Saturday, June 7, 1712

"In these and the like Cases, a Man's Judgment is easily perverted, and a wrong Bias hung upon his Mind. These are the Inlets of Prejudice, the unguarded Avenues of the Mind, by which a thousand Errors and secret Faults find Admission, without being observed or taken Notice of."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Saturday, June 7, 1712

"There is nothing of greater Importance to us than thus diligently to sift our Thoughts, and examine all these dark Recesses of the Mind, if we would establish our Souls in such a solid and substantial Virtue as will turn to Account in that great Day, when it must stand the Test of infinite Wisdo...

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Monday, June 23, 1712

"The Mind of Man naturally hates every thing that looks like a Restraint upon it, and is apt to fancy it self under a sort of Confinement, when the Sight is pent up in a narrow Compass, and shortned on every side by the Neighbourhood of Walls or Mountains."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Monday, June 23, 1712

"But there is nothing that makes its Way more directly to the Soul than Beauty, which immediately diffuses a secret Satisfaction and Complacency through the Imagination, and gives a Finishing to any thing that is Great or Uncommon."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Saturday, June 28, 1712

"We may observe, that any single Circumstance of what we have formerly seen often raises up a whole Scene of Imagery, and awakens numberless Ideas that before slept in the Imagination; such a particular Smell or Colour is able to fill the Mind, on a sudden, with the Picture of the Fields or Garde...

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Monday, June 30, 1712

"There is yet another Circumstance which recommends a Description more than all the rest, and that is if it represents to us such Objects as are apt to raise a secret Ferment in the Mind of the Reader, and to work, with Violence, upon his Passions."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Wednesday, July 2, 1712

"The Understanding, indeed, opens an infinite Space on every side of us, but the Imagination, after a few faint Efforts, is immediately at a stand, and finds her self swallowed up in the Immensity of the Void that surrounds it"

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Saturday, June 21, 1712

"We cannot indeed have a single Image in the Fancy that did not make its first Entrance through the Sight; but we have the Power of retaining, altering and compounding those Images, which we have once received, into all the varieties of Picture and Vision that are most agreeable to the Imaginatio...

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Saturday, June 28, 1712

"The Sett of Ideas, which we received from such a Prospect or Garden, having entered the Mind at the same time, have a Sett of Traces belonging to them in the Brain, bordering very near upon one another; when, therefore, any one of these Ideas arises in the Imagination, and consequently dispatche...

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Saturday, June 28, 1712

"By this means they awaken other Ideas of the same Sett, which immediately determine a new Dispatch of Spirits, that in the same manner open other Neighbouring Traces, till at last the whole Sett of them is blown up, and the whole Prospect or Garden flourishes in the Imagination."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)