Date: 1744

"Instinct points out an interest in hereafter; / But our blind Reason sees not where it lies; / Or, seeing, gives the substance for the shade."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"Beneath what baleful planet, in what hour / Of desperation, by what Fury's aid, / In what infernal posture of the soul, / All hell invited, and all hell in joy / At such a birth, a birth so near of kin, / Did thy foul fancy whelp so black a scheme / Of hopes abortive, faculties half-blown, / And...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"If not all-adamant, Lorenzo! hear: / All is delusion; Nature is wrapp'd up, / In tenfold night, from Reason's keenest eye; / There's no consistence, meaning, plan, or end / In all beneath the sun, in all above, / (As far as man can penetrate,) or heaven / Is an immense, inestimable prize; / Or a...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"And what is Reason? Be she thus defined: / Reason is upright stature in the soul."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: April 1750, 1791

"Yet still let reason thro' the eye of faith / View Him with fearful love; let truth pronounce, / And adoration on her bended knee / With Heav'n-directed hands confess His reign."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: January, 1754; 1791

"Survey the magnet's sympathetic love, / That wooes the yielding needle; contemplate / Th'attractive amber's power, invisible / Ev'n to the mental eye."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: March 1756

"But not to all,--for hark! the organs blow / Their swelling notes round the cathedral's dome, / And grace th'harmonious choir, celestial feast / To pious ears, and med'cine of the mind."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: February 1791

"The mind, in discovering truth, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye in discovering objects; when once any object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was in before it saw it."

— Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)