Date: Tuesday, January 8, 1751
"The old peripatetick principle, that Nature abhors a vacuum, may be properly applied to the intellect, which will embrace any thing, however absurd or criminal, rather than be wholly without an object."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: April 10, 1753
"The same contrariety of impulse may be perhaps discovered in the motions of men: we are formed for society, not for combination; we are equally unqualified to live in a close connection with our fellow beings, and in total separation from them: we are attracted towards each other by general symp...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1771
Speaking one's mind is "a publishing of some Energie or Motion" of the soul
preview | full record— Harris, James (1709-1780)
Date: 1775
"Also those phenomena in nature which depend upon gravity, electricity, &c. are no less various and complex; and the more we know of nature, the more particular facts, and particular laws, we are able to reduce to simple and general laws: insomuch that now it does not appear impossible, but that,...
preview | full record— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)
Date: 1794
"It [Christianity] has put the whole orbit of reason into shade."
preview | full record— Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)
Date: 1798
"Moral reasoning is nothing but the awakening of certain feelings; and the feeling by which he is actuated, is too strong to leave us much chance of impressing him with other feelings, that should have force enough to counterbalance it."
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)