Date: 1751

"[A] circumstance of barbarity, which had made such an impression upon his mind, as disordered his brain, and drove him to despair in a fit of which he had made away with himself, leaving his wife then big with child, to all the horrors of indigence and grief"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1751

"[A]s her mother's consent was already obtained, there was surely no necessity for a delay, that must infallibly make a dangerous impression upon his brain and constitution"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: August, 1752

"The soften‘d heart, prepar'd to take / Whate'er impressions Love shall make."

— Hamilton, William, of Bangour (1704-1754)

Date: 1755, 1836

The Maker has "impress'd" on the human breast, a "sense of kindred, country, man"

— Grainger, James (1721-1766)

Date: 1757, 1769

"Banish the dire impression from my breast. / For still I see the monster, as he stood."

— Wilkie, William (1721-1772)

Date: Performed Dec 1756, published 1757

"Time, that wears out the trace of deepest anguish, / As the sea smooths the prints made in the sand, / Has past o'er thee in vain."

— Home, John (1722-1808)

Date: 1757

"Since, therefore, the mind of man appears of so loose and unsteddy a contexture, that, even at present, when so many persons find an interest in continually employing on it the chissel and the hammer, yet are they not able to engrave theological tenets with any lasting impression; how much more ...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

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: January 1, 1760 - January 1, 1762; 1762

"He perceived the additional impression which the brain of his uncle had sustained, from the happy manner in which the benevolence of Sir Launcelot had so lately operated"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1762

"The same object makes not always the same impression; because the mind, being of a limited capacity, cannot, at the same instant, give great attention to a plurality of objects."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)