Date: 1744
"I do verily think there is not any other medicine whatsoever so effectual to restore a crazy constitution, and cheer a dreary mind, or so likely to subvert that gloomy empire of the spleen (Sect. 103) which tyrannizeth over the better sort (as they are called) of these free nations, and maketh t...
preview | full record— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)
Date: 1747
"With such goodness is our nature constituted, so gentle is the reign of virtue, that it restrains not its subjects from that enjoyment of bodily pleasures, which upon a right estimate will be found the sweetest: altho’ this she demands, that we should still preserve so lively a sense of the supe...
preview | full record— Hutcheson, Francis (1694-1746)
Date: 1747
"But on the other hand under the empire of sensuality there's no admittance for the virtues; all the nobler joys from a conscious goodness, a sense of virtue, and deserving well of others, must be banished; and generally along with them even the rational manly pleasures of the ingenious arts."
preview | full record— Hutcheson, Francis (1694-1746)
Date: Saturday, Aug. 3, 1754; 1756
"It is justly remarked by Horace, that what is conveyed to our Notice through our Ears, acts with a more feeble Impulse upon the Mind, than Objects that pass through the Organs of Sight, those faithful Evidences in a mental Court of Judicature."
preview | full record— Murphy, Arthur (1727-1805)
Date: 1756
"Many Things have been said, and very well undoubtedly, on the Subjection in which we should preserve our Bodies to the Government of our Understanding; but enough has not been said upon the Restraint which our bodily Necessities ought to lay on the extravagant Sublimities, and excentrick Rovings...
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: 1757
"Now the imagination is the most extensive province of pleasure and pain, as it is the region of our fears and our hopes, and of all our passions that are connected with them; and whatever is calculated to affect the imagination with these commanding ideas, by force of any original natural impres...
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: 1760-1761, 1762
"FORTUNE has made me the slave of another, but nature and inclination render me entirely subservient to you; a tyrant commands my body, but you are master of my heart."
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Date: 1760-1761, 1762
"You would fondly persuade me that my former lessons still influence your conduct, and yet your mind seems not less enslaved than your body."
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)