Date: 1726

"Reason alone is sufficient to govern a Rational Creature; which was therefore a Character we had no Pretence to challenge"

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: March 13, 1727

"Must these like empty shadows pass, / Or forms reflected from a glass? / Or mere chimeras in the mind, / That fly, and leave no marks behind?"

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: March 13, 1727

"And is not virtue in mankind / The nutriment that feeds the mind; / Upheld by each good action past, / And still continued by the last?"

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1727

"Old Men view best at a distance with the Eyes of their Understanding as well as with those of Nature."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1727

"The common Fluency of Speech in many Men, and most Women, is owing to a Scarcity of Matter, and a Scarcity of Words; for whoever is a Master of Language, and hath a Mind full of Ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the Choice of both; whereas common Speakers have only one Set of Ide...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1728

"At our Birth the Imagination is intirely a Tabula Rasa or perfect Blank, without any other Materials either for a Simple View or any Other Operation of the Intellect"

— Browne, Peter (d. 1735)

Date: 1728

"With respect to the simple Perception of Mere Sense he is still upon the same Level with Brutes; he is altogether Passive; he retains all the Signatures and Impressions of outward Objects, but in the very Order only in which they are stamped; with Transposing or Altering, Dividing, or Compoundin...

— Browne, Peter (d. 1735)

Date: 1728

It is by the senses that "the Ideas of external sensible Objects are first conveyed into the Imagination; and Reason or the pure Intellect ... operates upon those Ideas, and upon them, Only after they are so lodged in that common Receptacle"

— Browne, Peter (d. 1735)

Date: 1730

"Enlarge the Purlieu of my narrow Mind: / In Colours, plain, expose to Reason's Eye, / What, yet, to Reason Nature does deny"

— Smedley, Jonathan (1671-1729)

Date: 1731

Heaven stamped perfection on Caroline's mind

— Pilkington, Matthew (1701-1774)