Date: w. 1740, 1748

"Thirsting for Knowledge, but to know the right, / Thro' judgment's optick guide th' illusive sight, / To let in rays on Reason's darkling cell, / And Prejudice's lagging mists dispel."

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

Date: 1749

"Which, among other Things, may serve as a Comment on that Saying of Æschines, that Drunkenness shews the Mind of a Man, as a Mirror reflects his Person."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1750, 1770

"And, Morpheus, thus may thy mild Lethéan powers, / For ever hovering round my midnight hours, / Thro' Fancy's mirror wrap me in idéal joy."

— Hamilton, William Gerard (1729-1796)

Date: 1751

"There are few among Mankind, who have not been often struck with Admiration at the Sight of that Variety of Colours and Magnificence of Form, which appear in an Evening Rainbow. The uninstructed in Philosophy consider that splendid Object, not as dependent on any other, but as being possessed of...

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: 1751, 1791

"The mirrour, faithful to its charge, / Reflects the virgin's soul in large."

— Cotton, Nathaniel, the elder (1705-1788)

Date: 1752

"[H]er Vanity therefore retreated into her Mind, where there is no Looking-Glass, and consequently where we can flatter ourselves with discovering almost whatever Beauties we pleas"

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

Behavior is the optic glass that makes visible what passes in the mind

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: Tuesday, October 2, 1753

"It has been discovered by Sir Isaac Newton, that the distinct and primogenial colours are only seven; but every eye can witness, that from various mixtures, in various proportions, infinite diversifications of tints may be produced. In like manner, the passions of the mind, which put the world i...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1754

"Solitude now was all he sought, and dismissing his Companions, on Pretence of private Business, he retired to his Chamber to indulge his new Meditations, there making a Mirror of his Mind, he contemplated the Image of the beauteous Cressida; his raptured Fancy dwelt upon the inchanting Look she ...

— Lennox, née Ramsay, (Barbara) Charlotte (1730/1?-1804)

Date: 1754

"But memory will never present ideas to the human mind, as it does perhaps to superior intelligences, like objects in a mirror, where they may be viewed at every instant, all at once, without effort or toil, in their original freshness, and with their original precision, such as they were when th...

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)