Date: 1751
"Thus a lively Imagination and unperceived Self-Love, fetter the Heart in certain ideal Bonds of their own creating: Till at length some turbulent and furious Passion arising in its Strength, breaks these fantastic Shackles which Fancy had imposed, and leaps to its Prey like a Tyger chained by Co...
preview | full record— Brown, John (1715-1766)
Date: 1759
"How have thy Houyhnhunms thrown thy judgment from its seat, and laid thy imagination in the mire?"
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1759
"Their [pedants'] constant overstraining of the Mind / Distorts the Brain, as Horses break their Wind / Or rude Confusions of the Things they read / Get up, like noxious Vapours, in the Head, / Until they have their constant Wanes and Fulls, / And Changes in the Insides of their Skulls."
preview | full record— Butler, Samuel (1613-1680)
Date: 1760-7
"When a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion,--or, in other words, when his Hobby-Horse grows head-strong,--farewell cool reason and fair discretion!"
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
Date: 1761, 1765
"Labour and Want (unhospitable twain) / Chill not the current in Life's salient vein; / Nor damp the spirits, else of sprightly cast, / Nor check the nobler passions of the breast; / Nor blunt the fine Sensation's tender edge, / Which man's chief pride philosophers allege. / Thus some fair ...
preview | full record— Stevenson, William (1730-1783)
Date: 1762
"Therefore, I have no one notion, / That is not form'd, like the designing / Of the peristaltick motion; / Vermicular; twisting and twining; / Going to work / Just like a bottle-skrew upon a cork."
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
Date: 1769
"The first reverend sage who delivered himself on this mysterious subject, having stroked his grey beard, and hemmed thrice with great solemnity, declared that the soul was an animal; a second pronounced it to be the number three, or proportion; a third contended for the number seven, or harmony;...
preview | full record— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)
Date: 1769
"Pox on their philosophy! Instead of demonstrating the immortality of the soul, they have plainly proved the soul is a chimæra, a will o' the wisp, a bubble, a term, a word, a nothing!"
preview | full record— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)
Date: September, 1770
"This double feeling is of various kinds and various degrees; some minds receiving a colour from the objects around them, like the effects of the sun beams playing thro' a prism; and others, like the cameleon, having no colours of their own, take just the colours of what chances to be nearest them."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1772
"My Brain's disturb'd; alas! alas! I rave; / What can I do? a poor forsaken Slave! / Like Birds, that spend their little idle Rage, / And, fruitless, mourn, indignant of their Cage, / From Thought to Thought, my fluttering Spirits rove, / Betray'd to Bondage, and, ah! lost to Love."
preview | full record— Whyte, Samuel (1733-1811) [Editor]