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: October, 1759

"Of beasts, it is confessed, the ape / Comes nearest us in human shape; / Like man he imitates each fashion, / And malice is his ruling passion; / But both in malice and grimaces / A courtier any ape surpasses"

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1759

"You will easily believe that I was pleased with his courtesy; and finding that his predominant passion was desire of money, I began now to think my danger less, for I knew that no sum would be thought too great for the release of Pekuah."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"He shewed, with great strength of sentiment, and variety of illustration, that human nature is degraded and debased, when the lower faculties predominate over the higher."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"The way to be happy is to live according to nature, in obedience to that universal and unalterable law with which every heart is originally impressed; which is not written on it by precept, but engraven by destiny, not instilled by education, but infused at our nativity."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"He shewed, with great strength of sentiment, and variety of illustration, that human nature is degraded and debased, when the lower faculties predominate over the higher; that when fancy, the parent of passion, usurps the dominion of the mind, nothing ensues but the natural effect of unlawful go...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)