Date: 1754

But when we enter into a serious and impartial detail concerning this knowledge, and analyse carefully what the great pretenders to it have given and give us daily for knowledge, we shall be obliged to confess, that the human intellect is rather a rank than a fertile soil, barren without due cult...

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: February 1755

"See yon delicious woodbines rise / By oaks exalted to the skies, / So view in Harriot's matchless mind / Humility and greatness join'd."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: 1758, 1781

"'Tis hence the sev'ral Passions take their Rise, / The Seeds of Virtue, and the Roots of Vice; / Hence Notes peculiar or to Young, or Old, / Phlegmatic, sanguine, amorous, or cold!"

— Hawkins, William (1721-1801)

Date: 1759

"The mind of a man of Genius is a fertile and pleasant field, pleasant as Elysium, and fertile as Tempe"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1759

"That is, let not great Examples, or Authorities, browbeat thy Reason into too great a diffidence of thyself: Thyself so reverence as to prefer the native growth of thy own mind to the richest import from abroad; such borrowed riches make us poor."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1764

"Like such a garden, when the human soul, / Uncultured, wild, impatient of control, / Brings forth those passions of luxuriant race, /Which spread, and stifle every herb of grace

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1764

Virtue may wither on the bed she was born until Philosophy steps in and "clears the encumbered land" and "roots up every weed"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1764

"And by the way, according to the all-wise appointment of Providence, it is the same with the human mind, as it is with the earth; for education and good agriculture make the like improvements upon either."

— Harte, Walter (1708/9-1774)

Date: 1765 [1764]

"The friar, who knew nothing of the youth but what he had learnt occasionally from the princess, ignorant of what became of him, and not sufficiently reflecting on the impetuosity of Manfred's temper, conceived that it might not be amiss to sow the seeds of jealousy in his mind."

— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)

Date: 1765

"Reason in the bosom pours, / Its growth improves, its fruit matures, / Each counsel of the human brain / Weighs in his scale, and stamps it vain?"

— Merrick, James (1720-1769)