Date: 1753

"[B]ut, notwithstanding the fatigue he had undergone, sleep refused to visit his eye-lids, all his faculties being kept in motion by the ideas that crowded so fast upon his imagination"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1753, 1770

"Tho' liv'd he now he might appeal with scorn / To Lords, Knights, 'Squires and Doctors, yet unborn; / Or justly mad to Moloch's burning fane / Devote the choicest children of his brain."

— Armstrong, John (1708/9-1779)

Date: 1753

"A thousand Fiends were in that Bosom, and all let loose to tempt me--I had resisted else."

— Moore, Edward (1712-1757)

Date: 1754

"Then thus Philantha, in whose breast / Good-nature is a constant guest,"

— Bowden, Samuel (fl. 1733-1761)

Date: 1754

"If I cannot, draw out Cacus from his Den; I may pluck the Villain from my own Breast. I cannot cleanse the Stables of Augeas; but I may cleanse my own Heart from Filth and Impurity: I may demolish the Hydra of Vices within me; and should be careful too, that while I lop off ...

— Hay, William (1695-1755)

Date: 1754

"And let every deformed Person comfort himself with reflecting; that tho' his Soul hath not the most convenient and beautiful Apartment, yet that it is habitable: that the Accommodation will serve in an Inn upon the Road: that he is but Tenant for Life, or (more properly) at Will: and that, while...

— Hay, William (1695-1755)

Date: 1754

"Our simple ideas, and even our complex ideas, and notions return sometimes of themselves, we know not why, nor how, mechanically, as it were, uncalled by the mind, and often to the disturbance of it in the pursuit of other ideas, to which these intruders are foreign."

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1754

"Intellect, the artificer, works lamely without his proper instrument, sense; which is the case when he works on moral ideas."

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1755

"Thoughts come crouding in so fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to choose or to reject."

— Dryden [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1755

"Of sorriest fancies your companions making, / Using those thoughts which should indeed have died / With them they think on."

— Shakespeare [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]