Date: 1743

"We bleed, we tremble; we forget, we smile: / The mind turns fool before the cheek is dry. / Our quick-returning folly cancels all; / As the tide rushing rases what is writ / In yielding sands, and smooths the letter'd shore."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1757

"If we can direct the lights we derive from such exalted speculations, upon the humbler field of the imagination, whilst we investigate the springs and trace the course of our passions, we may not only communicate to the taste a sort of philosophical solidity, but we may reflect back on severer s...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1760-7

"Indeed there is one thing to be considered, that in Nova Zembla, North Lapland, and in all those cold and dreary tracts of the globe, which lie more directly under the artick and antartick circles,--where the whole province of a man's concernments lies for near nine months together, withi...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1771, 1816

"Thus man [like a cataract], the harpy of his own content, / With blust'ring passions, phrensically bent, / Wild in the rapid vortex whirls the soul, / Till reason bursts, impatient of controul."

— Maude, Thomas (1718-1798)

Date: 1771, 1816

"But now the wavy conflict tends to peace, / And jarring elements their tumults cease, / Placid below, the stream obsequious flows, / And silent wonders how fell Discord grows./ So the calm mind reviews her tortur'd state, / Resuming reason for the cool debate."

— Maude, Thomas (1718-1798)

Date: 1783

"Elegant speculations are sometimes found to float on the surface of the mind, while bad passions possess the interior regions of the heart."

— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)

Date: 1784

"The minds of these, our fellow-creatures, that are now drowned in ignorance, being thus opened and improved, the pale of reason would be enlarged; Christianity would receive new strength; liberty new subjects."

— Ramsay, James (1733-1789)