Date: 1747

"But the wild passions, once broke loose, to check / Surpass'd his pow'r, or the slack'd reins recall."

— Cardinal Melchior de Polignac (1661-1741)

Date: 1747

"These shall the fury Passions tear, / The vultures of the mind, / Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear, / And Shame that skulks behind."

— Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)

Date: 1747-8

Imaginations may be "un-reined"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1747-8

"Then how my heart began again to play its pug's tricks!"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1747-8

"The window was open. Away the troublesome bosom-visiter [Conscience], the intruder, is flown."

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1747-8

"Each mole-hill thought swells to a huge Olympus; / While we, fantastic dreamers, heave and puff, / And sweat with our imagination's weight."

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1748, 1777

"If they tell me, that they have mounted on the steps or by the gradual ascent of reason, and by drawing inferences from effects to causes, I still insist, that they have aided the ascent of reason by the wings of imagination; otherwise they could not thus change their manner of inference, and ar...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1749

People may "Bridle their passions and direct their will"

— Stepney, George (1663-1707)

Date: 1748, 1749

"Man is a machine so compound, that it is impossible to form at first a clear idea thereof, and consequently to define it. This is the reason, that all the enquiries the philosophers have made a priori, that is, by endeavouring to raise themselves on the wings of the understanding have proved ine...

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"Like that bird on yonder spray, the imagination seems to be perpetually ready to take wing."

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)