Date: 1759

"This [her own Mind] being haunted with Ghosts, dejected with an unaccountable Melancholy, and afflicted with a Variety of Distempers, tho' we are at a Loss to discover what Appellation to give them, is very often the Result of nothing more than a strong Imagination unimployed, which could be all...

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)

Date: 1759

"Their [pedants'] poring upon black and white too subtly / Has turn'd the Insides of their Brains to motly."

— Butler, Samuel (1613-1680)

Date: 1759

"Their [pedants'] constant overstraining of the Mind / Distorts the Brain, as Horses break their Wind / Or rude Confusions of the Things they read / Get up, like noxious Vapours, in the Head, / Until they have their constant Wanes and Fulls, / And Changes in the Insides of their Skulls."

— Butler, Samuel (1613-1680)

Date: January 27, 1759.

"That it is vain to shrink from what cannot be avoided, and to hide that from ourselves which must some time be found, is a truth which we all know, but which all neglect, and perhaps none more than the speculative reasoner, whose thoughts are always from home, whose eye wanders over life, whose ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: September 1, 1759.

" Ideas are retained by renovation of that impression which time is always wearing away, and which new images are striving to obliterate."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: September 1, 1759.

"The incursions of troublesome thoughts are often violent and importunate; and it is not easy to a mind accustomed to their inroads to expel them immediately by putting better images into motion; but this enemy of quiet is above all others weakened by every defeat; the reflection which has been o...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1760

"I found the spirit very busy, though I thought somewhat odly employed: she was running over a number of niches, or impressions, on the fibres of the brain, some of which I observed she renewed with such force, that she almost effaced others, which she passed over untouched, though interspersed a...

— Johnstone, Charles (c.1719-c.1800)

Date: 1760

"This place, where we are, is the seat of memory; and these traces, which you see me running over thus, are the impressions made on the brain by a communication of the impressions made on the senses by external objects."

— Johnstone, Charles (c.1719-c.1800)

Date: 1760

"Whenever this shall be executed, it is to be looked upon as the work of true genius; but when fallen short of, as often happens, it is to be deemed the impotent effort of the hard-bound brains of low plagiaries, whose memory is filled with the shreds and ill-chosen scraps of other mens wit."

— Macklin, Charles (1697-1797)

Date: June 27, 2025

"Quite often the thing that people respond to in my books is the train – the train wreck – of thought."

— Dyer, Geoff (b. 1958)