Date: February 4, 1752

"When we are employed in reading a great and good Author, we ought to consider ourselves as searching after Treasures, which, if well and regularly laid up in the Mind, will be of use to us on sundry Occasions in our Lives."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1754

"Sensation would be of little use to form the understanding, if we had no other faculty than mere passive perception; but without sensation these other faculties would have nothing to operate upon, reflection would have by consequence nothing to reflect upon, and it is by reflection that we multi...

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

Date: October 21, 1758.

"This counsel has been often given with serious dignity, and often received with appearance of conviction; but, as very few can search deep into their own minds without meeting what they wish to hide from themselves, scarce any man persists in cultivating such disagreeable acquaintance, but draws...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: September 15, 1759

"In the mythological pedigree of Learning, Memory is made the mother of the Muses by which the masters of ancient Wisdom, perhaps, meant to shew the necessity of storing the mind copiously with true notions, before the imagination should be suffered to form fictions or collect embellishments; for...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1773

"Instead of contemplating our own fancied perfections, or even real superiority with self-complacence, religion will teach us to 'look into ourselves, and fear:' the best of us, God knows, have enough to fear, if we honestly search into all the dark recesses of the heart, and bring out every thou...

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: 1774

"Let me, therfore, most earnestly recommend to you, to hoard up, while you can, a great stock of knowledge; for though, during the dissipation of your youth, you may not have occasion to spend much of it; yet, you may depend upon it, that a time will come, when you will want it to maintain you. P...

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1779, 1781

"The man that sits down to suppose himself charged with treason or peculation, and heats his mind to an elaborate purgation of his character from crimes which he was never within the possibility of committing, differs only by the infrequency of his folly from him who praises beauty which he never...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)