Date: Tuesday, February 12, 1751

"There are many diseases both of the body and mind, which it is far easier to prevent than to cure, and therefore I hope you will think me employed in an office not useless either to learning or virtue, if I describe the symptoms of an intellectual malady, which, though at first it seizes only th...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, January 22, 1751

"It is certain, that, with or without our consent, many of the few moments allotted us will slide imperceptibly away, and that the mind will break, from confinement to its stated task, into sudden excursions."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, January 22, 1751

"But this invisible riot of the mind, this secret prodigality of being, is secure from detection, and fearless of reproach."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, January 22, 1751

"The infatuation strengthens by degrees, and like the poison of opiates, weakens his powers, without any external symptoms of malignity."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, January 22, 1751

"It is, perhaps, not impossible to promote the cure of this mental malady, by close application to some new study, which may pour in fresh ideas, and keep curiosity in perpetual motion."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1754

"I shall not, therefore, say any thing further about the nature of mind in general, that secret spring of thought, unknown and unknowable, but shall content myself to observe, in Mr. Locke's method and with his assistance, something about the phænomena of the human mind, by which we may judge sur...

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1754

"Sensation would be of little use to form the understanding, if we had no other faculty than mere passive perception; but without sensation these other faculties would have nothing to operate upon, reflection would have by consequence nothing to reflect upon, and it is by reflection that we multi...

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1754

"If we consider them like materials, for so they may be considered likewise, employed to raise the fabric of our intellectual system, they will appear like mud, and straw, and lath, materials fit to erect some frail, and homely cottage, but not of substance, nor value sufficient for the construct...

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1754

"He maintained, according to his usual method, one hypothesis by another, and assumed that memory consists in certain traces made on the brain by the thoughts that pass through it, and that as long as they last we remember, but that the brain of the child in the womb being too moist, and too soft...

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1754

"On the other hand, we are able, at our will and with design, to put a sort of force on memory, to seize, as it were, the end of some particular line, and to draw back into the mind, a whole set of ideas that seem to be strung to it, or linked one with the other."

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)