Date: 1748

"Cæsar, Pompey, and Alexander the Great are continually in his mouth; and as he reads a good deal without any judgment to digest it, his ideas are confused, and his harrangues as unintelligible as infinite."

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1747-8

Passion may blind the judgment and help on meditated delusion

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1747-8

"Will not some serious thoughts mingle with thy melilot, and tear off the callus of thy mind, as that may stay the leather from thy back, and as thy epispastics may strip the parchment from thy plotting head?"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1747-8

"I can fancy, that to pink my body like my mind, I need only to be put into a hogshead stuck full of steel-pointed spikes, and rolled down a hill three times as high as the Monument."

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1748, 1777

"Man is a reasonable being; and as such, receives from science his proper food and nourishment."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"And though these researches may appear painful and fatiguing, it is with some minds as with some bodies, which being endowed with vigorous and florid health, require severe exercise, and reap a pleasure from what, to the generality of mankind, may seem burdensome and laborious."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"Obscurity, indeed, is painful to the mind as well as to the eye; but to bring light from obscurity, by whatever labour, must needs be delightful and rejoicing."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"It is remarkable concerning the operations of the mind, that, though most intimately present to us, yet, whenever they become the object of reflection, they seem involved in obscurity; nor can the eye readily find those lines and boundaries, which discriminate and distinguish them."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"But a late Philosopher has taught us, by the most convincing Arguments, that Morality is nothing in the abstract Nature of Things, but is entirely relative to the Sentiment or mental Taste of each particular Being; in the same Manner as the Distinctions of sweet and bitter, hot and cold, arise f...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"Our mental vision or conception of ideas is nothing but a revelation made to us by our Maker."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)