Date: Tuesday, April 10, 1750

"The great art therefore of piety, and the end for which all the rites of religion seem to be instituted, is the perpetual renovation of the motives to virtue, by a voluntary employment of our mind in the contemplation of its excellence, its importance, and its necessity, which, in proportion as ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, November 17, 1750

"[F]or most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them, roll down any torrent of custom in which they happen to be caught, or bend to any importunity that bears hard against them."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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: 1751

"While the blood runs high, and desire is rampant for possession, prudence is of little force; but when the one begins to flag, the other resumes its empire over the mind, and never rests till it finds means to retrieve what it has lost"

— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)

Date: 1751

"Oh had I known it sooner, engaged as I then was to one, who well deserved my love, could I have guessed miss Betsy Thoughtless was the contriver of that tender fraud, I know not what revolution might have happened in my heart! the empire you had there, was never totally extirpated, and kindness ...

— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)

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: 1751

"Whereas those darts, which fly from the perfections of the mind, penetrate into the soul, and fix a lasting empire there."

— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)

Date: August 27, 1751

"In like manner the passions usurp the separate command of the successive periods of life."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)