Date: 1735

"The Bard whom pilf'red Pastorels renown, / Who turns a Persian tale for half a crown, / Just writes to make his barrenness appear, / And strains, from hard-bound brains, eight lines a year."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1737

"That man makes a mean figure in the eye of reason, who is measuring syllables and coupling rhimes, when he should be mending his own soul and securing his own immortality."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1737

"Talk what you will of Taste, my Friend, you'll find, / Two of a Face, as soon as of a Mind."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1737, 1743

"Our Passions are like Convulsion-Fits, which, although they make us stronger for the time, leave us the weaker ever after."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1737, 1743

"Superstition is the Spleen of the Soul."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1737, 1743

"Wit in Conversation is only a readiness of thought and a facility of Expression, or (in the Midwives Phrase) a quick Conception and an easie Delivery."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1737

"You see 'tis with weak heads as with weak stomachs, they immediately throw out what they received last; and what they read floats upon the surface of their mind, like oil upon water, without incorporating."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1743

"The language of poesy brings all into action; and to represent a Critic encompassed with books, but without a supper, is a picture which lively expresseth how much the true Critic prefers the diet of the mind to that of the body, one of which he always castigates, and often totally neglects for ...

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1743

"Thy mental eye, for thou hast much to view: / Old scenes of glory, times long cast behind / Shall, first recall'd, rush forward to thy mind: / Then stretch thy sight o'er all her rising reign, / And let the past and future fire thy brain."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1746, 1749

"For the hurt Eye an instant Cure you find; Then why neglect, for Years, the sickening Mind?"

— Francis, Philip (1708-1773)