Date: Tuesday, January 22, 1751

"It is, perhaps, not impossible to promote the cure of this mental malady, by close application to some new study, which may pour in fresh ideas, and keep curiosity in perpetual motion."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, January 22, 1751

"This is a formidable and obstinate disease of the intellect, of which, when it has once become radicated by time, the remedy is one of the hardest tasks of reason and of virtue."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: August 27, 1751

"It had been a task worthy of the moral philosophers to have considered with equal care [as physicians have traced in the body the "various periods of the constitution"] the climactericks of the mind; to have pointed out the time at which every passion begins and ceases to predominate, and noted ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, February 25, 1752

"The eye of the mind, like that of the body, can only extend its view to new objects, by losing sight of those which are now before it."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, March 20, 1753

"[I]t is to be regretted, therefore, that he did not exercise his mind less, and his body more: since by this means, it is highly probable, that though he would not then have astonished with the blaze of a comet, he would yet have shone with the permanent radiance of a fixed star."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, October 2, 1753

"Every other passion is alike simple and limited, if it be considered only with regard to the breast which it inhabits; the anatomy of the mind, as that of the body, must perpetually exhibit the same appearances; and though by the continued industry of successive inquirers, new movements will be ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1754

"[I]f Knowledge had broke in upon [Adam] too fast, it would have overwhelm'd, and depress'd him; so that, as in the Case of some intolerable Load laid upon the Body, his Mind must have sunk under the Weight of it"

— Holloway, Benjamin (1690/1-1759)

Date: September 15, 1759

"The hand has no closer correspondence with the Memory than the eye"

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: September 15, 1759

"No man will read with much advantage, who is not able, at pleasure, to evacuate his mind, or who brings not to his Author an intellect defecated and pure, neither turbid with care nor agitated by pleasure."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: December 29, 1759

"If the senses were feasted with perpetual pleasure, they would always keep the mind in subjection."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)