Date: 1719-1720, 1725

"D'elmont, tho' he was a little startled to find her so much more Mistress of her Temper then he believ'd she could be, yet resolv'd to make all possible use of this Opportunity, which probably might be the last he shou'd ever have, look'd on her as she spoke, with Eyes so piercing, so sparkling ...

— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)

Date: 1719-1720, 1725

"Books were, as it were, Preparatives to Love, and by their softening Influence, melted the Soul, and made it fit for amorous Impressions."

— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)

Date: 1735, 1763

"Our lives like his in one smooth current flow, / Nor swell'd with tempest, nor too calmly slow, / Whilst he like some great sage of Rome or Greece, / Shall calm each rising doubt and speak us peace, / Correct each thought, each wayward wish controul, / And stamp with every virtue all the soul."

— Melmoth, William, the younger (bap. 1710, d. 1799)

Date: 1741

"So for Instance, in Children; they perceive and forget a hundred Things in an Hour; the Brain is so soft that it receives immediately all Impressions like Water or liquid Mud, and retains scarce any of them: All the Traces, Forms or Images which are drawn there, are immediately effaced or closed...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: w. 1740, 1748

"But when your early Care shall have design'd / To plan the Soul and mould the waxen Mind; / When you shall pour upon his tender Breast / Ideas that must stand an Age's Test, / Oh! there imprint with strongest deepest dye / The lovely form of Goddess LIBERTY!"

— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)

Date: 1754

"Religion stamp'd her sorrow-melting heart"

— Jeffreys, George (1678-1755)

Date: 1765

"Reason in the bosom pours, / Its growth improves, its fruit matures, / Each counsel of the human brain / Weighs in his scale, and stamps it vain?"

— Merrick, James (1720-1769)

Date: 1788

There are those "whom the traffic of their race / Has robb'd of every human grace; / Whose harden'd souls no more retain / Impressions Nature stamp'd in vain; / All that distinguishes their kind, / For ever blotted from their mind; / As streams, that once the landscape gave / Reflected o...

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: August 1817

"Whenever any object takes such a hold on the mind as to make us dwell upon it, and brood over it, melting the heart in love, or kindling it to a sentiment of admiration;--whenever a movement of imagination or passion is impressed on the mind, by which it seeks to prolong and repeat the emotion, ...

— Hazlitt, William (1778-1830)