Date: 1748, 1749

"Such is the chaos, such the rapid and continual succession of our ideas; they drive one another successively, as one wave impels another; so that it the imagination does not employ a part of its muscles, poised as it were in an equilibrium upon the strings of the brain, so as to sustain itself s...

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"'Tis this which is the source of all our sentiments, of all our pleasures, passions, and thoughts; for the brain has its proper muscles for thinking, as well as the legs have theirs for walking."

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1749

"Not Rome's sad Ruins such Impressions leave, / As Reason bury'd in the Body's Grave:"

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)

Date: 1749

"For Philosophy and Religion may be called the Exercises of the Mind, and when this is disordered they are as wholesome as Exercise can be to a distempered Body."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: April 1750, 1791

"Yet still let reason thro' the eye of faith / View Him with fearful love; let truth pronounce, / And adoration on her bended knee / With Heav'n-directed hands confess His reign."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: Tuesday, June 12, 1750

"But timidity is a disease of the mind more obstinate and fatal; for a man once persuaded that any impediment is insuperable, has given it, with respect to himself, that strength and weight which it had not before."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: August 13, 1750

"Beings conscious of a frame of mind originally diseased, as all the human race has cause to be, must use the regimen of a stricter self- government."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, August 28, 1750

"The passions are diseases indeed, but they necessarily direct us to their proper cure."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, September 15, 1750

"But this medicine of the mind is like many remedies applied to the body, of which, though we see the effects, we are unacquainted with the manner of operation, and of which, therefore, some, who are unwilling to suppose any thing out of the reach of their own sagacity, have been inclined to doub...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, November 27, 1750

"I had formed schemes which I cannot execute, I had supposed events which do not come to pass, and the rest of my life must pass in craving solicitude, unless you can find some remedy for a mind, corrupted with an inveterate disease of wishing, and unable to think on any thing but wants, which re...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)