Date: 1752

The mind bears a mental burthen as the body bears a physical one

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

"You know, my Dear, how gloomy the Prospect was Yesterday before our Eyes, how inevitable Ruin stared me in the Face; and the dreadful Idea of having entailed Beggary on my Amelia and her Posterity racked my Mind."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

"By the latter I shall see whether you can keep a Secret; and if it is no otherwise material, it will be a wholesome Exercise to your Mind; for the Practice of any Virtue is a kind of mental Exercise, and serves to maintain the Health and Vigour of the Soul."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1754

"How you wound my soul by the supposition!"

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

Date: 1759

"To the mind, as to the eye, it is difficult to compare with exactness objects vast in their extent, and various in their parts."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something acquired."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye, and while we glide along the stream of time, whatever we leave behind us is always lessening, and that which we approach increasing in magnitude."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1760-7

"That had said glass been there set up, nothing more would have been wanting, in order to have taken a man's character, but to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive, and look'd in,--view'd the soul stark naked;--observ'd all her motions,--her machinations;--tra...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

Wit and judgment "in this world never go together; inasmuch as they are two operations differing from each other as wide as east is from west.--So, says Locke,--so are farting and hickuping, say I."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"[A]n illustration is no argument,--nor do I maintain the wiping of a looking-glass clean, to be a syllogism;--but you all, may it please your worships, see the better for it,--so that the main good these things do, is only to clarify the understanding, previous to the application of the argument...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)