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."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, November 27, 1750

"Being accustomed to give the future full power over my mind, and to start away from the scene before me to some expected enjoyment, I deliver up myself to the tyranny of every desire which fancy suggests, and long for a thousand things which I am unable to procure."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, April 14, 1750

"He therefore that would govern his actions by the laws of virtue, must regulate his thoughts by those of reason; he must keep guilt from the recesses of his heart, and remember that the pleasures of fancy, and the emotions of desire, are more dangerous as they are more hidden, since they escape ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, November 3, 1750

"When we have heated our zeal in a cause, and elated our confidence with success, we are naturally inclined to persue the same train of reasoning, to establish some collateral truth, to remove some adjacent difficulty, and to take in the whole comprehension of our system. As a prince in the ardou...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1751

"He stood; content to bow to Custom's Throne, / So Reason mote not blush his sovran Rule to own."

— West, Gilbert (1703-1756)

Date: 1751

"And fettering on her Throne th' immortal Mind, / The Guidance of her Realm to Passions wild resign'd."

— West, Gilbert (1703-1756)

Date: Tuesday, March 12, 1751

"[T]hey therefore flattered his vanity, applauded his discoveries, and listened with submissive modesty to his lectures on the uncertainty of inclination, the weakness of resolves, and the instability of temper, to his account of the various motives which agitate the mind, and his ridicule of the...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1751

"For partly the Recommendation of his Person, but chiefly the Profusion of his Expences made her think him a very desireable Lover; and as she saw that his ruling Passion was Vanity, she was too good a Dissembler, and too much a Mistress of her Trade, not to flatter this Weakness for her own Ends."

— Coventry, (William) Francis Walter (1725-1753/4)

Date: August 27, 1751

"In like manner the passions usurp the separate command of the successive periods of life."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1752

"In vain--The Master-Passion governs still, / And forces you to yield against your Will"

— Duncombe, John (1729-1786) [pseud.]