Date: 1776

"But the greatest happiness of the greatest number requires, that they should be not only imagined but proved: and this they shall now be, in so far as natural probability, aided by whatever support it may be thought to receive from the character of the narrator, can gain credence, for the indica...

— Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832)

Date: 1776

"The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, who have made such a great progress in the sciences, were not actuated by supernatural causes, or any innate principles in their original formation; the mind is a mere blank, but capable of receiving such impressions as custom, education, or any other relative c...

— Gwynn, John (bap. 1713, d. 1786)

Date: 1776

"If you really then think that, every process, termed mental, in man, is in fact nothing more than so many distinct nervous vibrations, then I readily grant that matter may think, for undoubtedly every stretched cord, when touched, will vibrate; and I will farther grant, that a fiddle, in that se...

— Berington, Joseph (1743-1827)

Date: 1776-1789

"The emperor Maximus, who had advanced as far as Ravenna, to secure that important place, and to hasten the military preparations, beheld the event of the war in the more faithful mirror of reason and policy."

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1776

"Being chosen by Vulcan, Neptune and Minerva, to give his judgment concerning their works, he blamed them all; Neptune for not making his bull with horns before his eyes; Minerva for building a house that could not be removed in case of bad neighbours; and Vulcan for making a man without a window...

— Noorthouck, John (1746?-1816)

Date: December 10, 1776; 1777

"But I am persuaded, that scarce a poet is to be found, from Homer down to Dryden, who preserved a sound mind in a sound body, and continued practising his profession to the very last, whose later works are not as replete with the fire of imagination, as those which were produced in...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1776; 1777

"To understand literally these metaphors or ideas expressed in poetical language, seems to be equally absurd as to conclude, that because painters sometimes represent poets writing from the dictates of a little winged boy or genius, that this same genius did really inform him in a whisper what he...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1776; 1777

"The natural appetite or taste of the human mind is for Truth; whether that truth results from the real agreement or equality of original ideas among themselves; from the agreement of the representation of any object with the thing represented; or from the correspondence of the several parts of a...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1776; 1777

"All arts having the same general end, which is to please, and addressing themselves to the same faculties through the medium of the senses, it follows that their rules and principles must have as great affinity as the different materials and the different organs or vehicles by which they pass to...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1776; 1777

"The same disposition, the same desire to find something steady, substantial and durable, on which the mind can lean as it were, and rest with safety. The subject only is changed."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)