Date: 1751

"This Speech, I own, gave me the first Reflection I ever had in my Life, and lock'd up all my Faculties for a long Time; nor was I able, for the Variety of Ideas that crowded my Brain, to make a Word of Answer, but stood like an Image of Stone"

— Paltock, Robert (1697-1767)

Date: 1751, 1777

"It is sufficient for our present purpose, if it be allowed, what surely, without the greatest absurdity, cannot be disputed, that there is some benevolence, however small, infused into our bosom; some spark of friendship for human kind; some particle of the dove, kneaded into our frame, along wi...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751, 1777

"Another spring of our constitution, that brings a great addition of force to moral sentiment, is, the love of fame; which rules, with such uncontrolled authority, in all generous minds, and is often the grand object of all their designs and undertakings."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751, 1777

"The one [reason] discovers objects, as they really stand in nature, without addition or diminution: The other [taste] has a productive faculty, and gilding or staining all natural objects with the colours, borrowed from internal sentiment, raises, in a manner, a new creation."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: June 1751, 1752

"Thou [Eagle] type of wit and sense confin'd, / Cramp'd by the oppressors of the mind, / Who study downward on the ground."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: w. 1749, 1751

"O Master of the heart whose magic skill / The close recesses of the Soul can find."

— Edwards, Thomas (d. 1757)

Date: 1751

"True philosophy was not known till that time; and it is but justice to say, that commencing from the last year of Cardinal Richelieu, and proceeding to those which immediately succeeded the death of Louis XIV. there came to pass in our arts, in our minds, in our manners, as well as in our govern...

— Arouet, François-Marie [known as Voltaire] (1694-1778)

Date: 1751

"Tears gushing again, my heart fluttering as a bird against its wires; drying my eyes again and again to no purpose."

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1751

"If motives be of very different kinds, with regard to strength and influence, which we feel to be the case; it is involved in the very idea of the strongest motive, that it must have the strongest effect in determining the mind. This can no more be doubted of, than that, in a balance, the greate...

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1751

"In other cases, where the field of choice is wider, and where opposite motives counterbalance and work against each other, the mind fluctuates for a while, and feels itself more loose: but, in the end, must as necessarily be determined to the side of the most powerful motive, as the balance, aft...

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)