Date: 1745

"Sense is our helmet, Wit is but the plume; / The plume exposes, 'tis our helmet saves."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1745

"Sense is the diamond, weighty, solid, sound; / When cut by Wit, it casts a brighter beam; / Yet, Wit apart, it is a diamond still."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1745

"There is, I grant, a triumph of the pulse, / A dance of spirits, a mere froth of joy, / Our thoughtless Agitation's idle child, / That mantles high, that sparkles, and expires, / Leaving the soul more vapid than before; / An animal ovation! such as holds / No commerce with our reason, but subsis...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1755

"Or, the Power and Sway which the Soul exercises over them! Ten thousand Reins put into her Hands; yet she manages all, conducts all, without the least Perplexity or the least Irregularity: rather, with a Promptitude, a Consistency, and a Speed, that nothing else can equal!"

— Hervey, James (1714-1758)

Date: 1757

"Behold, thro' fancy's mirrour, what a scene / The phantom opens, ample, wide, and fair, / Each golden minute, bearing as it flies / Imaginary raptures on its wing; / Flatt'ring my fond deluded heart with dreams / Of lasting pleasure--but alas, how soon / This fairy Eden to a waste is turn'd?"

— Hervey, James (1714-1758)

Date: 1759

"The mind of a man of Genius is a fertile and pleasant field, pleasant as Elysium, and fertile as Tempe"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1759

"But why are Originals so few? not because the Writer's harvest is over, the great Reapers of Antiquity having left nothing to be gleaned after them; nor because the human mind's teeming time is past, or because it is incapable of putting forth unprecedented births."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1759

"The minds of the Schoolmen were almost as much cloistered as their bodies; they had but little learning, and few books."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1759

"That medling Ape Imitation, as soon as we come to years of Indiscretion (so let me speak), snatches the Pen, and blots out nature's mark of Separation, cancels her kind intention, destroys all mental Individuality"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1759

"Both are founded on the same bottom; on our ignorance of the possible dimensions of the mind of man."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)