Date: w. April 18, 1776; 1777

"Even my love of literary fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding my frequent disappointments."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1782

Those who wear "The Zone of Venus" "never know / To what enchanting charm they owe / The empire of the heart"

— Logan, John (1748-1788)

Date: 1783

"For the passions and imagination mutually affect each other; and the same rules will serve for the government of both."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"The fruits of Sobriety are health, gladness, governable passions, clear discernment, rectitude of opinion, the esteem of others, and long life; which, with an approving conscience, are the greatest blessings here below, and, in all common cases, an effectual security against a diseased imaginati...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"I should not do justice to my subject, if I did not recommend moderate application to the studious in general, and to those of them chiefly whose fancy has become ungovernable from a depression of mind."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: w. January 24, 1789

"Reason drops headlong from his sacred throne."

— Burns, Robert (1759-1796)

Date: w. January 24, 1789

"Your dear idea reigns, and reigns alone; / Each thought intoxicated homage yields, / And riots wanton in forbidden fields."

— Burns, Robert (1759-1796)

Date: 1789, 1800

"On his one ruling passion Sir Pope hugely labors, / That, like th'old Hebrew walking-switch, eats up its neighbours."

— Burns, Robert (1759-1796)

Date: 1789, 1800

"Human Nature's his show-box--your friend, would you know him? / Pull the string, Ruling Passion--the picture will show him."

— Burns, Robert (1759-1796)

Date: 1790

"But though man has, in this manner, been rendered the immediate judge of mankind, he has been rendered so only in the first instance; and an appeal lies from his sentence to a much higher tribunal, to the tribunal of their own consciences, to that of the supposed impartial and well-informed spec...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)