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: 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: August 27, 1751

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

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1755

"Love, when permitted to reign in a tender bosom, is an absolute tyrant, requiring unconditional obedience, and deeming every instance of discretion and prudence, and even too often of virtue, an act of rebellion against its usurped authority, iii. 77. [61]."

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1757

"Now this great Ambition, which in other Times or Nations hath wrought such wonderful Effects, is no longer to be found among us. It is the Pride of Equipage, the Pride of Title, the Pride of Fortune, or the Pride of Dress, that have assumed the Empire over our Souls, and levelled Ambition with t...

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: 1759

"In the fairyland of fancy, genius may wander wild; there it has a creative power, and may reign arbitrarily over its own empire of chimeras."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: September 1, 1759.

"Employment is the great instrument of intellectual dominion."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)