Date: 1699

"We do plainly perceive that our Bodies are clogs to our Minds: And all the use that even the purest sort of Body in an Estate conceived to be glorified, can be of to a Mind, is to be an Instrument of local Motion, or to be a repository of Ideas for Memory and Imagination."

— Burnet, Gilbert (1643-1715)

Date: 1759

"His mind is continually occupied with what is too grand and solemn, to leave any room for the impressions of those frivolous objects, which fill up the attention of the dissipated and the gay."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"The soft, the amiable, the gentle virtues, all the virtues of indulgent humanity are in comparison but little insisted upon, and seem on the contrary, by the Stoics in particular, to have been often regarded as meer weaknesses which it behoved a wise man not to harbour in his breast."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1762

"In the latter passage, the most striking circumstances are selected to fill the mind with the grand and terrible. The former is a collection of minute and low circumstances, which scatter the thought and make no impression."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1762

"Grandeur and novelty fix the attention for a considerable time, excluding all other ideas; and the mind thus occupied feels no vacuity."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1762

"In such a state, the train of perceptions must not only be slow, but extremely uniform. Anger newly inflamed eagerly grasps its object, and leaves not a cranny in the mind for another thought than of revenge."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1783

"Hence infinite space, endless numbers, and eternal duration, fill the mind with great ideas."

— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)

Date: 1783

"It must be painted with such circumstances as fill the mind with great and awful ideas."

— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)

Date: 1785

"The analogy between memory and a repository, and between remembering and retaining, is obvious and is to be found in all languages."

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)