Date: January 1739

"[I]t follows that every thing which invigorates and enlivens the soul, whether by touching the passions or imagination, naturally conveys to the fancy this inclination for ascent, and determines it to run against the natural stream of its thoughts and conceptions"

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

Personal identity may be like a river which is totally alter'd "in less than four and twenty hours."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1739

"Faint is the lesson reason's rules impart: / [Drama] pours it strong and instant through the heart"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: January 1739

"Since the imagination, therefore, in running from low to high, finds an opposition in its internal qualities and principles, and since the soul, when elevated with joy and courage, in a manner seeks opposition, and throws itself with alacrity into any scene of thought or action where its courage...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"The vividness of the first conception diffuses itself along the relations, and is convey'd, as by so many pipes or canals, to every idea that has any communication with the primary one."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"The attention is on the stretch; the posture of the mind is uneasy; and the spirits being diverted from their natural course, are not governed in their movements by the same laws, at least not to the same degree, as when they flow in their usual channel."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1742, 1777

"Human minds are smaller streams, which, arising at first from the ocean [of Divintity], seek still, amid all wanderings, to return to it, and to lose themselves in that immensity of perfection"

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1742, 1777

"As a stream necessarily follows the several inclinations of the ground, on which it runs; so are the ignorant and thoughtless part of mankind actuated by their natural propensities"

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1743

"For all was pure within: No fell Remorse, / Nor anxious Castings up of what might be, / Alarm'd his peaceful Bosom: Summer Seas / Shew not more smooth, when kiss'd by Southern Winds / Just ready to expire."

— Blair, Robert (1699-1746)

Date: 1745

"For the fair Peace, / The tender Joys of Hymeneal Love, / May Jealousy awak'd, and fell Remorse, / Pour all their fiercest Venom thro' his Breast!"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)