Date: Tuesday, August 28, 1750

"Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1766

"I know not whether the remark is to our honour or otherwise, that the lessons of wisdom have never such a power over us, as when they are wrought into the heart, through the ground-work of a story which engages the passions: Is it that we are like iron, and must first be heated before we can be ...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1779, 1781

"Truth indeed is always truth, and reason is always reason; they have an intrinsick and unalterable value, and constitute that intellectual gold which defies destruction: but gold may be so concealed in baser matter that only a chymist can recover it; sense may be so hidden in unrefined and plebe...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1781

"But the difference is much greater between the ideas of sense, the materials upon which the mind first begins its work, and the truths produced by its operations, than between the rough marble, and the statue formed by the skill of PHIDIAS."

— Rotheram, John (1725–1789)

Date: 1781

"Let matter then be allowed to furnish the first materials; the enlightened mind, which by its operations upon these discovers truth, and pursues it through all its distant connections, must have powers as far superiour to that which gave the first impression, as PHIDIAS is superiour to the marble."

— Rotheram, John (1725–1789)