Date: 1742

"Socrates, and other ancients, seem to have had particular pleasure in running a parallel between agriculture and the improvement of the mind: But in no respect does the comparison or likeness hold more exactly than in this, that as the ground must be properly prepared for the reception and nouri...

— Turnbull, George (1698-1748)

Date: 1742

"Instruction will be but thrown away, it cannot sink into the mind, or take firm root there, so as to fructify, if the mind be not pure and clean, pliable, or docile and open to truth and knowledge, but will quickly be chocked by the opposite illiberal temperature"

— Turnbull, George (1698-1748)

Date: 1742

"The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds; and instead of vines and olives for the pleasure and use of man, produces, to its slothful owner, the most abundant crop of poisons."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1745

"I would rather compare it [the mind] to a Seed, which contains all the Stamina of the future Plant, and all those Principles of Perfection, to which it aspires in its After-growth, and regularly arrives by gradual Stages, unless it is obstructed in its Progress by external Violence."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1745

"He says that, tho' he were not nobly born, / Nature has form'd him noble, generous, brave, / Truely magnanimous, and warmly scorning / Whatever bears the smallest Taint of Baseness: / That every easy Virtue is his own; / Not learnt by painful Labour, but inspir'd, / Implanted in his Soul."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1745

"Behold the fatal Work of my dark Hand, / That by rude Force the Passions would command, / That ruthless sought to root them from the Breast; / They may be rul'd, but will not be opprest."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1746

"Deep to the root / Of vegetation parch'd, the cleaving fields / And slippery lawn an arid hue disclose, / Blast Fancy's bloom, and wither e'en the soul."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1746

Yet the kind source of every gentle art, / And all the soft civility of life: / Raiser of human kind! by Nature cast, / Naked, and helpless, out amid the woods / And wilds, to rude inclement elements; / With various seeds of art deep in the mind / Implanted, and profusely pour'd around / Material...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1748, 1777

"The passion for philosophy, like that for religion, seems liable to this inconvenience, that, though it aims at the correction of our manners, and extirpation of our vices, it may only serve, by imprudent management, to foster a predominant inclination, and push the mind, with more determined re...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748

"But more he search'd the mind, and roused from sleep / Those moral seeds whence we heroic actions reap."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)