Date: Tuesday, April 10, 1750

"Our senses, our appetites, and our passions, are our lawful and faithful guides, in most things that relate solely to this life; and, therefore, by the hourly necessity of consulting them, we gradually sink into an implicit submission, and habitual confidence."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, April 14, 1750

"For such is the inequality of our corporeal to our intellectual faculties, that we contrive in minutes what we execute in years, and the soul often stands an idle spectator of the labour of the hands, and expedition of the feet."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, April 14, 1750

"Since by revolving with pleasure the facility, safety, or advantage of a wicked deed, a man soon begins to find his constancy relax, and his detestation soften; the happiness of success glittering before him, withdraws his attention from the atrociousness of the guilt, and acts are at last confi...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, April 14, 1750

"Such, therefore, is the importance of keeping reason a constant guard over imagination, that we have otherwise no security for our own virtue, but may corrupt our hearts in the most recluse solitude, with more pernicious and tyrannical appetites and wishes than the commerce of the world will gen...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1751

"All the senses, like the family at Harlowe-Place, in a confederacy against that which would animate, and give honour to the whole, were it allowed its proper precedence"

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

Date: 1751

"This Speech, I own, gave me the first Reflection I ever had in my Life, and lock'd up all my Faculties for a long Time; nor was I able, for the Variety of Ideas that crowded my Brain, to make a Word of Answer, but stood like an Image of Stone"

— Paltock, Robert (1697-1767)

Date: 1751, 1791

"The passions are a num'rous crowd, / Imperious, positive, and loud: / Curb these licentious sons of strife; / Hence chiefly rise the storms of life: / If they grow mutinous, and rave, / They are thy masters, thou their slave."

— Cotton, Nathaniel, the elder (1705-1788)

Date: 1752, 1791

"This home philosophy, you know, / Was priz'd some thousand years ago. / Then why abroad a frequent guest? / Why such a stranger to your breast?"

— Cotton, Nathaniel, the elder (1705-1788)

Date: 1752, 1791

"Life's records rise on ev'ry side, / And Conscience spreads those volumes wide; / Which faithful registers were brought / By pale-ey'd Fear and busy Thought. / Those faults which artful men conceal, / Stand here engrav'd with pen of steel, / By Conscience, that impartial scribe!"

— Cotton, Nathaniel, the elder (1705-1788)

Date: 1752

"The Spirit is active, and loves best to inhabit those Minds where it may meet with the most Work."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)