Date: 1743
"Th'all-rev'renc'd Leader call'd a wily Mind, [...] Now, stript and naked, skimm'd th'eternal Space, / Anxious for Office, and in Wait, for Place."
preview | full record— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)
Date: 1744, 1772, 1795
"Then the inexpressive strain / Diffuses its inchantment: fancy dreams / Of sacred fountains and Elysian groves, / And vales of bliss: the intellectual power / Bends from his awful throne a wondering ear, / And smiles: the passions, gently sooth'd away, / Sink to divine repose, and love and joy /...
preview | full record— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)
Date: November 6, 1746
"She [Desdemona] saw, as the truly valuable Part of the Sex do, Othello's Visage in his Mind; she was too innocent and resigned to be guarded against the Wiles of envious and designing Men; and thus, while basking in the Sunshine of Love, and sporting in the Splendor of its divine Emanations, she...
preview | full record— Horsley, William (attrib.)
Date: 1746
"As age come on, and vigorous minds decay / All pleasures sicken, satiate, die away."
preview | full record— Ruffhead, James
Date: 1748, 1754
"In this Light, the Administration itself, nay, every Act of it, becomes an Object of Affection, the Evil disappears, or is converted into a Balm which both heals and nourishes the Mind."
preview | full record— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)
Date: 1748, 1754
"[I]t may be said of most Men, that their intellectual Organs are as much shut up and secluded from proper Nourishment and Exercise in that little Circle to which they are confined, as the bodily Organs are in the Womb."
preview | full record— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)
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...
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: Saturday March 24, 1750
"Those who have proceeded so far as to appeal to the tribunal of succeeding times, are not likely to be cured of their infatuation; but all endeavours ought to be used for the prevention of a disease, for which, when it has attained its height, perhaps no remedy will be found in the gardens of ph...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Tuesday, February 12, 1751
"There are many diseases both of the body and mind, which it is far easier to prevent than to cure, and therefore I hope you will think me employed in an office not useless either to learning or virtue, if I describe the symptoms of an intellectual malady, which, though at first it seizes only th...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
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."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)