Date: September 15, 1759

"If the repositories of thought are already full, what can they receive?"

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"If you, these moral Truths, would comprehend, / To moral Writers, your Attention lend; / By reading them, you'll Wisdom's Honey gain, / And with her golden Stores, inrich your Brain."

— Marriott, Thomas (d. 1766)

Date: September 1, 1759.

"If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur, and every recurrence would reinstate them in their former place."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: September 1, 1759.

"The mind cannot retire from its enemy into total vacancy, or turn aside from one object but by passing to another."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1760

"These first impressions are called ideas, which are lodged in this repository of the memory, in these marks, by running which over, I can raise the same ideas, when I please, which differ from their first appearance only in this, that, on their return, they come with the familiarity of a former ...

— Johnstone, Charles (c.1719-c.1800)

Date: 1760

"Whenever this shall be executed, it is to be looked upon as the work of true genius; but when fallen short of, as often happens, it is to be deemed the impotent effort of the hard-bound brains of low plagiaries, whose memory is filled with the shreds and ill-chosen scraps of other mens wit."

— Macklin, Charles (1697-1797)

Date: 1760-7

The gifts and endowments of wit and judgment may "be poured down warm as each of us could bear it,--scum and sediment an' all; (for I would not have a drop lost) into these veral receptacles, cells, cellules, domiciles, dormitories, refectories, and spare places of our brains,--in such sort, that...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"I would not, brother Toby, continued my father,--I declare I would not have my head so full of curtins and horn-works."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"But so full is your head of these confounded works, that tho' my wife is this moment in the pains of labour,--and you hear her cry out,--yet nothing will serve you but to carry off the man-midwife."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"I would not, I would not, brother Toby, have my brains so full of saps, mines, blinds, gabions, palisadoes, ravelins, half-moons, and such trumpery, to be proprietor of Namur, and of all the towns in Flanders with it."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)