Date: 1766-1769, 1956
"Formerly my mind was quite a lodging-house for all ideas who chose to put up there, so that it was at the mercy of accident, for I had no fixed mind of my own. Now my mind is a house where, though the street rooms and the upper floors are open to strangers, yet there is always a settled family i...
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1766-1769, 1956
"Only this more. The ideas--my lodgers--are of all sorts. Some, gentlemen of the law, who pay me a great deal more than others. Divines of all sorts have been with me, and have ever disturbed me. When I first took up house, Presbyterian ministers used to make me melancholy with dreary tones. Meth...
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: September, 1770
"The feelings and passions of the character which he represents, must take full possession as it were of the antichamber of his mind, while his own character remains in the innermost recess."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1774
"Here lies honest William, whose heart was a mint, / While the owner ne'er knew half the good that was in't."
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Date: 1774
"While awake, and in health, this busy principle [the imagination] cannot much delude us: it may build castles in the air, and raise a thousand phantoms before us; but we have every one of the senses alive, to bear testimony to its falsehood."
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Date: 1774
"Reason, therefore, at once gives judgment upon the cause; and the vagrant intruder, imagination, is imprisoned, or banished from the mind."
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Date: September 2, 1770 to September 12, 1773; October, 1770 [1777]
"So simple a people I scarce ever saw. They did 'open the window in their breast.' And it was easy to discern, that God was there, filling them with joy and peace in believing."
preview | full record— Wesley, John (1703-1791)
Date: 1778
God, "Who view'st each thought yet lab'ring in my mind, / Say, in what secret cell,
/ Far from the glance of feeble human kind, / Doth pure religion dwell?"
preview | full record— Ellis, George (1753-1815)
Date: March, 1778
"An antient philosopher indeed, full of real or pretended honesty, declared it to be his wish that there were a window in his breast that every body might see the integrity and purity of his thoughts. It would be truly be very pretty and amusing if our bodies were transparent, so that we could se...
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)