Date: 1732

"And as those fruits which grow from the most generous and mature stock, in the choicest soil, and with the best culture, are most esteemed; even so ought we not to think, those sublime truths which are the fruits of mature thought, and have been rationally deduced by men of the best and most imp...

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1732

"And if so, being in fact reasonable, natural, and true, they ought not to be esteemed unnatural whims, errors of education, and groundless prejudices, because they are raised and forwarded by manuring and cultivating our tender minds, because they take early root and sprout forth betimes by the ...

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1748

"It is most true that the root of religion lies in the heart, in the inmost soul; [...] but if this root be really in the heart it cannot put forth branches"

— Wesley, John (1703-1791)

Date: 1750, 1752

"Whether the Mind, like Soil, doth not by Disuse grow stiff; and whether Reasoning and Study be not like stirring and dividing the Glebe?"

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1750, 1752

"Whether even those Parts of Academical Learning which are quite forgotten, may not have improved and enriched the Soil, like those Vegetables which are raised, not for themselves, but plowed in for a Dressing of Land?"

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: Tuesday, March 27, 1750

"The task of an author is, either to teach what is not known, or to recommend known truths by his manner of adorning them; either to let new light in upon the mind, and open new scenes to the prospect, or to vary the dress and situation of common objects, so as to give them fresh grace and more p...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, November 3, 1750

"Some of these instructors of mankind have not contented themselves with checking the overflows of passion, and lopping the exuberance of desire, but have attempted to destroy the root as well as the branches; and not only to confine the mind within bounds, but to smooth it for ever by a dead calm."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, December 21, 1751

"A careless glance upon a favourite author, or transient survey of the varieties of life, is sufficient to supply the first hint or seminal idea, which, enlarged by the gradual accretion of matter stored in the mind, is by the warmth of fancy easily expanded into flowers, and sometimes ripened in...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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: 1754

"The human soul is so far from being furnished with forms and ideas to perceive all things by, or from being impregnated, I would rather say than printed over, with the seeds of universal knowledge, that we have no ideas till we receive passively the ideas of sensible qualities from without."

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)