Date: 1771
Speaking one's mind is "a publishing of some Energie or Motion" of the soul
preview | full record— Harris, James (1709-1780)
Date: 1775
"Also those phenomena in nature which depend upon gravity, electricity, &c. are no less various and complex; and the more we know of nature, the more particular facts, and particular laws, we are able to reduce to simple and general laws: insomuch that now it does not appear impossible, but that,...
preview | full record— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)
Date: 1775
"If there be but one vicious mind in the Set, 'twill spread like a contagion--the action of their pulse beats to the lascivious movement of the jigg--their quivering, warm-breath'd sighs impregnate the very air--the atmosphere becomes electrical to love, and each amorous spark darts thro' every l...
preview | full record— Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)
Date: 1777
"My father did not then perceive this; it was not till he waited on Montauban, that the force of it struck his mind."
preview | full record— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)
Date: 1777
"If they say, that affection is a mere involuntary impulse, neither waiting the decisions of reason, or the dissuasive of prudence, do they not in reality degrade us to machines, which are blindly actuated by some uncontrollable power?"
preview | full record— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)
Date: 1779
"A man's natural inclination works incessantly upon him ... The force of the greatest gravity, say the philosophers, is infinitely small, in comparison of that of the least impulse: yet it is certain, that the smallest gravity will, in the end, prevail above a great impulse; because no strokes or...
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1782
"I wonder what companions she has met with--there is a magnetism in good-nature which will ever attract its like--so if she meets with beings the least social--but that's as chance wills!"
preview | full record— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)
Date: 1789
"Far nobler prize my heart constrains, / Yielding to soft controul; / Far other beauty binds in chains / The magnet of my soul."
preview | full record— Colvill, Robert (d. 1788)
Date: 1791
"In progress of time, when my mind was, as it were, strongly impregnated with the Johnsonian aether, I could with much more facility and exactness, carry in my memory and commit to paper the exuberant variety of his wisdom and wit."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1794
"It [Christianity] has put the whole orbit of reason into shade."
preview | full record— Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)