Date: 1757

"They who have not taken these methods, if their Taste decides quickly, it is always uncertainly; and their quickness is owing to their presumption and rashness, and not to any sudden irradiation that in a moment dispels all darkness from their minds."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1758

"While in your hearts the flames of love may burn, / To dress the vault, like lamps in sacred urn."

— Parnell, Thomas (1679-1718)

Date: 1759

"Support our virtue:--kindle in our souls / A ray of your divine enthusiasm; / Such as inflames the patriot's breast, and lifts / Th'impassion'd mind to that sublime of virtue, / That even on the rack it feels the good, / Which in a single hour it works for millions, / And leaves the legacy to af...

— Murphy, Arthur (1727-1805)

Date: 1759

"A more than midnight gloom involves my soul."

— Murphy, Arthur (1727-1805)

Date: 1759

"He smiles contempt; as if some inward joy, / Like the sun lab'ring in a night of clouds, / Shot forth its glad'ning unresisted beams, / Chearing the face of woe."

— Murphy, Arthur (1727-1805)

Date: 1760-7

"[A]nd what is more astonishing, he had never in his whole life the least light or spark of subtilty struck into his mind, by one single lecture upon Crackenthorp or Burgersdicius, or any Dutch logician or commentator."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

Wit and judgment are two luminaries and "their irradiations are suffered from time to time to shine down upon us."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

Ideas "follow and succeed one another in our minds at certain distances, just like the images in the inside of a lanthorn turned round by the heat of a candle."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"His boasted reason seems only to light him astray, and brutal instinct more regularly points out the path to happiness."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"Where, I again repeat it, is human reason! not only some men, but whole nations, seem divested of its illumination."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)