Date: 1757

"The term Taste, like all other figurative terms, is not extremely accurate: the thing which we understand by it, is far from a simple and determinate idea in the minds of most men, and it is therefore liable to uncertainty and confusion."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: w. 1757, 1758

"Oh how this earth's best blessings sink in worth, / When on that scene is open'd the mind's eyes!"

— Dodd, William (1729-1777)

Date: 1758, 1781

"'Tis with our Minds, as with our Bodies, none / In Essence differ, yet each knows his own."

— Hawkins, William (1721-1801)

Date: 1758, 1781

"Nay in Proportion lighter Ails controul / The mental Virtue, and infect the Soul."

— Hawkins, William (1721-1801)

Date: 1759

"Their superficial weakness and trivial folly hinder them from ever turning their eyes inwards, or from seeing themselves in that despicable point of view in which their own consciences should tell them that they would appear to every body, if the real truth should ever come to be known."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of self-delusion, which covers from his view the deformities of his own conduct. Rather than see our o...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"We are so nice in this respect that even a rape dishonours, and the innocence of the mind cannot, in our imagination, wash out the pollution of the body."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"But why are Originals so few? not because the Writer's harvest is over, the great Reapers of Antiquity having left nothing to be gleaned after them; nor because the human mind's teeming time is past, or because it is incapable of putting forth unprecedented births."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1759

"The minds of the Schoolmen were almost as much cloistered as their bodies; they had but little learning, and few books."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1759

"But as good books are the medicine of the mind, if we should dethrone these authors, and consider them, not in their royal, but their medicinal capacity, might it not then be said, that Addison prescribed a wholesome and pleasant regimen, which was universally relished, and did much good; that P...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)