Date: 1745

"The infant Mind is ductile like Wax; you may stamp a fair or ugly Impression upon it, Error or Knowledge, Indolence or Application, Virtue or Vice."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1745

"But when the Practice comes; when our fond Passions, / Pleasure and Pride and Self-Indulgence throw / Their magic Dust around, the Prospect roughens: / Then dreadful Passes, craggy Mountains rise, / Cliffs to be scal'd, and Torrents to be stem'd."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1745

"Distraction!--O my Soul!--Hold, Reason, hold / Thy giddy Seat--O this inhuman Outrage / Unhinges Thought!"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1745

"But from my Soul to banish, / While weeping Memory there retains her Seat, / Thoughts which the purest Bosom might have cherish'd, / Once my Delight, now even in Anguish charming, / Is more, alas! my Lord, than I can promise."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1745

"Forgive my Heat. / My rankled Mind, by Injuries inflam'd, / May be too prompt to take and give Offence."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1745

"Nought now has Charms or Terrors to my Breast, / The Seat of stupid Woe!"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1745

"The conscious Mind is its own awful World."

— 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

"For lofty sense, / Creative fancy, and inspection keen / Through the deep windings of the human heart, / Is not wild Shakespeare thine and Nature's boast?"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1748

"[B]ut now that I looked upon myself as a murderer, it is impossible to express the terrors of my imagination, which was incessantly haunted by the image of the deceased, and my bosom stung with the most exquisite agonies, of which I saw no end."

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)