Date: 1762
"The pleasure of a train of ideas, is the most remarkable in a reverie; especially where the imagination interposes, and is active in coining new ideas, which is done with wonderful facility."
preview | full record— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)
Date: 1762
"Reflecting upon things passing in his own mind, he will find, that a brisk circulation of thought constantly prompts him to action; and that he is averse to action when his perceptions languish in their course."
preview | full record— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)
Date: 1762
"Another valuable purpose may be gathered, from considering in what manner objects are imprinted upon the mind."
preview | full record— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)
Date: 1762
"To make such an impression as to give the memory fast hold of the object, time is required, even where attention is the greatest; and a moderate degree of attention, which is the common case, must be continued still longer to produce the same effect."
preview | full record— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)
Date: 1762
"The like false reckoning of time may proceed from an opposite state of mind. In a reverie, where ideas float at random without making any impression, time goes on unheeded and the reckoning is lost."
preview | full record— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)
Date: 1779-1780, 1781
"He had employed his mind chiefly upon works of fiction and subjects of fancy, and by indulging some peculiar habits of thought was eminently delighted with those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular ...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1779-1780, 1781
"These clouds which he perceived gathering on his intellects he endeavoured to disperse by travel, and passed into France; but found himself constrained to yield to his malady, and returned."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1779-1780, 1781
"The latter part of his life cannot be remembered but with pity and sadness. He languished some years under that depression of mind which enchains the faculties without destroying them, and leaves reason the knowledge of right without the power of pursuing it."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1779, 1781
"The variable weather of the mind, the flying vapours of incipient madness, which from time to time cloud reason, without eclipsing it, it requires so much nicety to exhibit, that Addison seems to have been deterred from prosecuting his own design."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1779, 1781
"When Horace says of Pindar, that he pours his violence and rapidity of verse, as a river swoln with rain rushes from the mountain; or of himself, that his genius wanders in quest of poetical decorations, as the bee wanders to collect honey; he, in either case, produces a simile; the mind is impr...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)