Date: 1776-1789

"Their secret gloom, the imagined residence of an invisible power, by presenting no distinct object of fear or worship, impressed the mind with a still deeper sense of religious horror; and the priests, rude and illiterate as they were, had been taught by experience the use of every artifi...

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1776-1789

"The casual disputes that so frequently happened in their tumultuous parties of hunting or drinking were sufficient to inflame the minds of whole nations"

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1775, 1776

"'Let Meekness as a dove / 'Brood in man's heart the sacred acts of Love."

— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)

Date: 1776

"But the greatest happiness of the greatest number requires, that they should be not only imagined but proved: and this they shall now be, in so far as natural probability, aided by whatever support it may be thought to receive from the character of the narrator, can gain credence, for the indica...

— Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832)

Date: 1776

"The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, who have made such a great progress in the sciences, were not actuated by supernatural causes, or any innate principles in their original formation; the mind is a mere blank, but capable of receiving such impressions as custom, education, or any other relative c...

— Gwynn, John (bap. 1713, d. 1786)

Date: 1774-1776, 1788, 1803

"From a stranger hand / Ah, what can infancy expect, when she / Whose essence was inwove with thine, whose life, / Whose soul thou didst participate, neglects / Herself in thee, and breaks the strongest seal / Which nature stamp'd in vain upon her heart"

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1774-1776, 1788, 1803

"Well-skill'd / To form the growing soul, and on its young / And opening bud to fix the impression deep / Of every generous thought"

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1776

"If you really then think that, every process, termed mental, in man, is in fact nothing more than so many distinct nervous vibrations, then I readily grant that matter may think, for undoubtedly every stretched cord, when touched, will vibrate; and I will farther grant, that a fiddle, in that se...

— Berington, Joseph (1743-1827)

Date: 1776

"Oft let remembrance sooth his mind / With dreams of former days, / When in the lap of Peace reclined / He framed his infant lays; / When Fancy roved at large, nor Care / Nor cold Distrust alarm'd, / Nor Envy with malignant glare / His simple youth had harm'd."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1776-1789

"The emperor Maximus, who had advanced as far as Ravenna, to secure that important place, and to hasten the military preparations, beheld the event of the war in the more faithful mirror of reason and policy."

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)