Date: 1711
"While Passions in their Breasts ungovern'd rage, / Distract the Mind, and War intestine wage, / Reason divine from her high Throne descends, / Lays by her Scepter, and her Pow'r suspends."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: January 1739
"The attention is on the stretch; the posture of the mind is uneasy; and the spirits being diverted from their natural course, are not governed in their movements by the same laws, at least not to the same degree, as when they flow in their usual channel."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1740
"But notwithstanding the empire of the imagination, there is a secret tie or union among particular ideas, which causes the mind to conjoin them more frequently together, and makes the one, upon its appearance, introduce the other."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1773
"The grand Contrivance why so well equip / With strength of Passions, rul'd by Reason's Whip?"
preview | full record— Byrom, John (1692-1763)
Date: 1774
"While awake, and in health, this busy principle [the imagination] cannot much delude us: it may build castles in the air, and raise a thousand phantoms before us; but we have every one of the senses alive, to bear testimony to its falsehood."
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)