Date: Saturday, November 17, 1750
"[F]or most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them, roll down any torrent of custom in which they happen to be caught, or bend to any importunity that bears hard against them."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Saturday, December 13, 1750
"The most important events, when they become familiar, are no longer considered with wonder or solicitude, and that which at first filled up our whole attention, and left no place for any other thought, is soon thrust aside into some remote repository of the mind, and lies among other lumber of t...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Saturday, April 14, 1750
"This inquiry seems to have been neglected for want of remembering, that all action has its origin in the mind, and that therefore to suffer the thoughts to be vitiated, is to poison the fountains of morality."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Saturday, December 22, 1750
"When they are condemned by the elements to retirement, and debarred from most of the diversions which are called in to assist the flight of time, they can find new subjects of inquiry, and preserve themselves from that weariness which hangs always flagging upon the vacant mind."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Saturday March 24, 1750
"Those who have proceeded so far as to appeal to the tribunal of succeeding times, are not likely to be cured of their infatuation; but all endeavours ought to be used for the prevention of a disease, for which, when it has attained its height, perhaps no remedy will be found in the gardens of ph...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Saturday, November 3, 1750
"The philosophers having found an easy victory over those desires which we produce in ourselves, and which terminate in some imaginary state of happiness unknown and unattainable, proceeded to make further inroads upon the heart, and attacked at last our senses and our instincts."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Tuesday, November 20, 1750
"Yet, if we consider the conduct of those sententious philosophers, it will often be found, that they repeat these aphorisms, merely because they have somewhere heard them, because they have nothing else to say, or because they think veneration gained by such appearances of wisdom, but that no id...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1751
"This Speech, I own, gave me the first Reflection I ever had in my Life, and lock'd up all my Faculties for a long Time; nor was I able, for the Variety of Ideas that crowded my Brain, to make a Word of Answer, but stood like an Image of Stone"
preview | full record— Paltock, Robert (1697-1767)
Date: 1751, 1777
"It is sufficient for our present purpose, if it be allowed, what surely, without the greatest absurdity, cannot be disputed, that there is some benevolence, however small, infused into our bosom; some spark of friendship for human kind; some particle of the dove, kneaded into our frame, along wi...
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1751, 1777
"Another spring of our constitution, that brings a great addition of force to moral sentiment, is, the love of fame; which rules, with such uncontrolled authority, in all generous minds, and is often the grand object of all their designs and undertakings."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)