Date: 1714

"Reason is now no more; that narrow Lamp / (Which with its sickly Fires wou'd shoot its Beams / To Distances unknown, and stretch its Rays / Ascance my Paths, in deepest darkness veil'd) / Is sunk into its Socket"

— Evans, Abel (1679-1737)

Date: 1722

"Or that as the Rays of Light from the Sun are instantly transmitted to all the sublunary Parts of the great World; so hence the Sensitivum Quid, in like Manner, through the nervous Tubes, having here their Origin, should as suddenly as those Rays darted from that great Luminary, be likewi...

— Turner, Daniel (1667-1741)

Date: 1723, 1740

Love is a "glorious Sun within our Souls, / Whose Influence so much controuls; / Ev'n dull and heavy Lumps of Love, / Quicken'd by [it], more lively move"

— Sheffield, John, first duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1647-1721)

Date: 1723, 1725

"AS Tapers languish at th' Approach of Day," and as the "Book of Fame" may be "Eraz'd and blotted," "So fully o'er the Soul may a lover's Influence reign, "That not one Rebel-Thought [its] Sway disdains"

— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)

Date: 1724, 1725

One may be "puzzled with a too great Variety" and "have their Judgments dimm'd with the Confusion of Ideas"

— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)

Date: 1732

"But this is what I foresaw, a flood of light let in at once upon the mind being apt to dazzle and disorder, rather than enlighten it."

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1739

"Fill our whole Souls with heav'nly Light, / Melt with Seraphick Fire."

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: 1744

"Falters thy tongue, and fails to speak, / And heaves thy breast, and droops thy head, / Glimmers the lamp of life, and dies"

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: 1749

"Yet should thy Soul indulge the gen'rous Heat, / Till captive Science yields her last Retreat / Should Reason guide thee with her brightest Ray, / And pour on misty Doubt resistless Day; / Should no false Kindness lure to loose Delight, / Nor Praise relax, nor Difficulty fright; / Should temptin...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, June 26 1750

"Yet as the errours and follies of a great genius are seldom without some radiations of understanding, by which meaner minds may be enlightened, the incitements to pleasure are, in those authors, generally mingled with such reflections upon life, as well deserve to be considered distinctly from t...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)