Date: 1742
"My soul is all a troubled sea, / I cannot find my rest in Thee."
preview | full record— Wesley, John and Charles
Date: 1747
Johnson's dictionary may "awaken to the care of purer diction some men of genius, whose attention to argument makes them negligent of style, or whose rapid imagination, like the Peruvian torrents, when it brings down gold, mingles it with sand."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Saturday, July 28, 1750
"Thus in time want is enlarged without bounds; an eagerness for increase of possessions deluges the soul, and we sink into the gulphs of insatiability, only because we do not sufficiently consider, that all real need is very soon supplied, and all real danger of its invasion easily precluded."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Saturday, September 15, 1750
"The attention is dissipated by variety, and acts more weakly upon any single part, as that torrent may be drawn off to different channels, which, pouring down in one collected body, cannot be resisted."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Saturday, September 29, 1750
"Nor is it necessary, that, to feel this uneasiness, the mind should be extended to any great diffusion of generosity, or melted by uncommon warmth of benevolence; for that prudence which the world teaches, and a quick sensibility of private interest, will direct us to shun needless enmities; sin...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Saturday, April 7, 1750
"He would, upon the trial, have been soon convinced, that the fountain of content must spring up in the mind: and that he who has so little knowledge of human nature, as to seek happiness by changing any thing but his own dispositions, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the gr...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
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 1, 1750
"He that is angry without daring to confess his resentment, or sorrowful without the liberty of telling his grief; is too frequently inclined to give vent to the fermentations of his mind at the first passages that are opened, and to let his passions boil over upon those whom accident throws in h...
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, November 3, 1750
"Some of these instructors of mankind have not contented themselves with checking the overflows of passion, and lopping the exuberance of desire, but have attempted to destroy the root as well as the branches; and not only to confine the mind within bounds, but to smooth it for ever by a dead calm."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)