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, 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: Tuesday, January 22, 1751

"This is a formidable and obstinate disease of the intellect, of which, when it has once become radicated by time, the remedy is one of the hardest tasks of reason and of virtue."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: August 27, 1751

"It had been a task worthy of the moral philosophers to have considered with equal care [as physicians have traced in the body the "various periods of the constitution"] the climactericks of the mind; to have pointed out the time at which every passion begins and ceases to predominate, and noted ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1752, 1790

A mind may be "soft, tho' bright, like her own eyes, / Discreetly witty, gayly wise."

— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787)

Date: 1752

"Worse than the other--Whom, thus robb'd of Pow'r. / His former Passions fatally devour!"

— Duncombe, John (1729-1786) [pseud.]

Date: 1752

"Well! does that make you wise, / Or open on your Follies, Reason's Eyes!"

— Duncombe, John (1729-1786) [pseud.]

Date: Tuesday, February 25, 1752

"The eye of the mind, like that of the body, can only extend its view to new objects, by losing sight of those which are now before it."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1752

"I am going now, Madam, to relate to you one of those strange Accidents, which are produced by such a Train of Circumstances, that mere Chance hath been thought incapable of bringing them together; and which have therefore given Birth, in superstitious Minds, to Fortune, and to several other imag...

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

"For Love, in the Minds of Men, hath one Quality at least of a Fever, which is to prefer Coldness in the Object. Confess, dear Will, is there not something vastly refreshing in the cool Air of a Prude."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)