Date: 1741

"Cornelius quickly discovered, that these two last operations of the intellect were very weak in Martin, and almost totally extinguish'd in Crambe; however he used to say that Rules of Logick are Spectacles to a purblind understanding, and therefore he resolved to proceed with his two Pupils."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744); Arbuthnot, John (bap. 1677, d. 1735)

Date: 1749

"Which, among other Things, may serve as a Comment on that Saying of Æschines, that Drunkenness shews the Mind of a Man, as a Mirror reflects his Person."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

"[H]er Vanity therefore retreated into her Mind, where there is no Looking-Glass, and consequently where we can flatter ourselves with discovering almost whatever Beauties we pleas"

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

Behavior is the optic glass that makes visible what passes in the mind

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1756, 1766

"I will love thee therefore, O Lord, my strength; yea, I will love thee: and it ever shall be my heart's desire, that my soul may behold by faith in its self, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, able and ready to change it into the same image from glory to glory, reflected upon, and conveyed to...

— Amory, Thomas (1690/1-1788)

Date: 1756, 1766

From "the natural lights of our understanding" we have the highest reason to conclude we will be rewarded or punished in the afterlife

— Amory, Thomas (1690/1-1788)

Date: 1756, 1766

God may cast his "bright beams of light upon our souls, and irradiate our understandings with the rays of ... wisdom"

— Amory, Thomas (1690/1-1788)

Date: 1760

"And here it will be proper to have recourse to the expedient we made use of before, and holding up the mirrour to imagination, view the whole scene as if actually present"

— Johnstone, Charles (c.1719-c.1800)

Date: 1760-7

"That had said glass been there set up, nothing more would have been wanting, in order to have taken a man's character, but to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive, and look'd in,--view'd the soul stark naked;--observ'd all her motions,--her machinations;--tra...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"[I]n the planet Mercury (belike) it may be so, if not better still for [the biographer];--for there the intense heat of the country, which is proved by computators, from its vicinity to the sun, to be more than equal to that of red hot iron,--must, I think, long ago have vitrified the bodies of ...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)