Date: 1741
"There are are some Persons who complain they cannot remember divine or human Discourses which they hear, when in Truth their Thoughts are wandering half the Time, or they hear with such coldness and Indifferency and a trifling Temper of Spirit, that it is no wonder the Things which are read or s...
preview | full record— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)
Date: 1743
"No; in pity sent, / To melt him down, like wax, and then impress, / Indelible, Death's image on his heart; / Bleeding for others, trembling for himself."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1744, 1772, 1795
"The hand of nature on peculiar minds / Imprints a different byass, and to each / Decrees its province in the common toil."
preview | full record— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)
Date: 1745
"The infant Mind is ductile like Wax; you may stamp a fair or ugly Impression upon it, Error or Knowledge, Indolence or Application, Virtue or Vice."
preview | full record— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)
Date: 1746, 1753
"The SOUL, inhabiting the Brain, or acting, where it doubtless does, immediately behind the Optic Nerves, stamps, instantaneously upon the Eye, and Eyebrow, a struck Image of conceiv'd Idea: And that in Fact it does This, and that it does it, in the very Instant of Conception, every Man must ever...
preview | full record— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)
Date: w. 1740, 1748
"But when your early Care shall have design'd / To plan the Soul and mould the waxen Mind; / When you shall pour upon his tender Breast / Ideas that must stand an Age's Test, / Oh! there imprint with strongest deepest dye / The lovely form of Goddess LIBERTY!"
preview | full record— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)
Date: 1748, 1749
"In the fair sex, the soul adapts itself to the delicacy of constitution: thence flow that tenderness, that affection, those lively sentiments founded rather upon passion than reason; and in fine, those prejudices and superstitions whose impression is so hard to be effaced."
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1748, 1749
"Hurried with incessant rapidity by the vortex of blood and animal spirits, one undulation makes an impression, which is immediately effaced by another; the soul pursues it, but often in vain: she must wait to bewail the loss of what she did not quickly lay hold of; and thus it is that the imagin...
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: Tuesday, August 28, 1750
"Yet it too often happens that sorrow, thus lawfully entering, gains such a firm possession of the mind, that it is not afterwards to be ejected; the mournful ideas, first violently impressed and afterwards willingly received, so much engross the attention, as to predominate in every thought, to ...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Tuesday, April 3, 1750
"He that enlarges his curiosity after the works of nature, demonstrably multiplies the inlets to happiness; and, therefore, the younger part of my readers, to whom I dedicate this vernal speculation, must excuse me for calling upon them, to make use at once of the spring of the year, and the spri...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)