Date: 1769

"Pox on their philosophy! Instead of demonstrating the immortality of the soul, they have plainly proved the soul is a chimæra, a will o' the wisp, a bubble, a term, a word, a nothing!"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1770-1

"This rather disconcerted his scheme, and set him a scratching, that being a kind of involuntary motion with him, whenever a train of ideas kept whirling in his brain with such velocity that he could not fix on any single one to stick by, and let the rest whirl out the way they came in."

— Bridges, Thomas (b. 1710?, d. in or after 1775)

Date: 1771

"[T]he fumes of faction not only disturb the faculty of reason, but also pervert the organs of sense"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1771

"My heart seemed to die within me when I entered this dismal bagnio, and sound my brain assaulted by such insufferable effluvia."

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1771

"O gracious! my poor Welsh brain has been spinning like a top ever since I came hither!"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1771

"A small stock of ideas is more easily managed, and sooner displayed than a great quantity crowded together"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1771

It "is curious to observe how the nature of truth may be changed by the garb it wears; softened to the admonition of friendship, or soured into the severity of reproof: yet this severity may be useful to some tempers; it somewhat resembles a file; disagreeable in its operation, but hard metals ma...

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: w. 1767, dated 1773 [unpublished in period]

"To show that all inferences of reason are false or uncertain, and that the understanding acting alone does entirely subvert itself, and prove by argument that by argument nothing can be proved, he has contrived a puppet of mushrooms, cork, cobwebs, gossamer, and other fungous and flimsy material...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1773

"The passions which thou didst implant in me, that reason which should balance them, is unable to withstand"

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1773

"Zounds! Sir, can you give any relief to a soul that is haunted by Furies?"

— Graves, Richard (1715-1804)