Date: April 26, 1695; 1708
"Meditating by one's self is like digging in the Mine; it often, perhaps, brings up maiden Earth, which never came near the Light before; but whether it contain any Metal in it, is never so well tried as in Conversation with a knowing judicious Friend, who carries about him the true Touch-stone, ...
preview | full record— Locke, John (1632-1704)
Date: 1710 [1719, 1729]
"Black Night comes on, and interrupts the Day, / E'er it can chase the Mists and Fogs away; / The Dregs of Flesh and Drossy Lees, o'errun / The Soul, and weigh the strugling Spirit down:"
preview | full record— Oldisworth, William (1680-1734)
Date: 1724
"As a Stone in a Wall, fastened with Mortar, compressed by surrounding Stones, and involved in a Million of other Attractions, cannot fall to the Earth, nor sensibly exert its natural Gravity, no, not so much as to discover there is such a Principle in it; just so, the intelligent Soul, in this h...
preview | full record— Cheyne, George (1671-1743)
Date: 1731
"Now I observe that it is so far from being true, that all our Objective Cogitations or Ideas are Corporeal Effluxes or Radiations from Corporeal Things without, or impressed upon the Soul from them in a gross Corporeal Manner, as a Signature or Stamp is imprinted by a Seal upon a piece of Wax or...
preview | full record— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)
Date: 1735
"Her lovely Mind shines chearful thro' her Face, / A sacred Lamp in a fair Crystal Case."
preview | full record— Hughes, John (1678?-1720)
Date: 1743
"And is devotion virtue? 'Tis compell'd: / What heart of stone but glows at thoughts like these?"
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1750
"A mind in wisdom old, in lenience young, / From fervent truth where every virtue sprung; / Where all was real, modest, plain, sincere; / Worth above show, and goodness unsevere: / View'd round and round, as lucid diamonds throw / Still as you turn them a revolving glow, / So did his mind reflect...
preview | full record— Thomson, James (1700-1748)
Date: 1755, 1771
"But he whose active, unencumber'd mind / Leaves this low earth and all its mists behind, / Fond in a pure unclouded sky to glow, / Like the bright orb that rises on the Po, / O'er half the globe with steady splendour shines, / And ripens virtues as it ripens mines."
preview | full record— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)
Date: February 3, 1788
"The spirit of the Gospel 'proclaims liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound:' but these men rivet the chains of slavery; 'the iron enters into the Negro's soul,' while while his mind is left in all the darkness of ignorance, without one ray of those comforts ...
preview | full record— Agutter, William (1758-835)
Date: 1790
"Men are caught indeed by the effusions of a brilliant fancy and bright imagination; but its refulgence and flashes, like the coruscations of the diamond, serve only to sparkle in the eye of the beholder, and to dazzle his sight, without further use or advantage to any one: whereas practical good...
preview | full record— Moore, Charles (fl. 1785-90)