Date: 1722

"No Man can boast a God-like Mind, / From that Infernal Dross refin'd; / By Nature all are Base"

— Ward, Edward (1667-1731)

Date: 1722

"Furnish'd with nothing but a faithless Breast, / Where only filthy Lusts and Passions dwell, Like Dirt and Cobwebs in a Hermet's Cell."

— Ward, Edward (1667-1731)

Date: 1726

"I know in descriptions of this nature the scenes are generally supposed to grow out of the author's imagination, and if they are not charming in all their parts, the reader never imputes it to the want of sun or soil, but to the barrenness of invention"

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: 1726

"Their proper country, says Philander, is the breast of a good man: for I think they are most of them the figures of Virtues."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: 1726

"To remember where he enters in the succession, they only consider in what part of the cabinet he lies; and by runinng over in their thoughts such a particular drawer, will give you an account of all the remarkable parts of his reign."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: 1732, 1736

Reason may over-rule fancy

— Granville, George, Baron Lansdowne (1666-1735)

Date: 1737

"'Cou'd your Eyes penetrate my naked Breast, / 'There you might read these Characters engrav'd, / 'That, by your Virtues I am bound! inslav'd!"

— Ogle, George (1704-1746)

Date: 1745

"Truth is an amiable and delightful Object to the Eye of the Mind, but it is not easily apprehended by the Bulk of Mankind; especially if it be remote from common Observation, or abstracted from sensible Experience."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1745

"The Ideas must be cloathed in a bodily Form, to make it visible and palpable to the gross Understanding."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1745

"We are told by Philosophers, of no small Note, that the Mind is, at first, a kind of Tabula rasa, or like a Piece of blank Paper, that it bears no original Inscriptions, when we come into the World,--that we owe all the Characters afterwards drawn upon it, to the Impressions made upon our Senses...

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)