Date: 1760

"Whenever this shall be executed, it is to be looked upon as the work of true genius; but when fallen short of, as often happens, it is to be deemed the impotent effort of the hard-bound brains of low plagiaries, whose memory is filled with the shreds and ill-chosen scraps of other mens wit."

— Macklin, Charles (1697-1797)

Date: January 12, 1760

"To fix deeply in the mind the principles of science, to settle their limitations, and deduce the long succession of their consequences; to comprehend the whole compass of complicated systems, with all the arguments, objections, and solutions, and to reposite in the intellectual treasury the numb...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1761

"After the cursory view of Nature, which was concluded in my last Lecture, it may not be amiss to examine our own faculties, and see by what means we acquire and treasure up a knowledge of those things; and this is done, I apprehend, by means of the senses, the operations of the mind, and the mem...

— Telescope, Tom [pseud.]

Date: 1762

"In the latter passage, the most striking circumstances are selected to fill the mind with the grand and terrible. The former is a collection of minute and low circumstances, which scatter the thought and make no impression."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1762

"Grandeur and novelty fix the attention for a considerable time, excluding all other ideas; and the mind thus occupied feels no vacuity."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1762

"In such a state, the train of perceptions must not only be slow, but extremely uniform. Anger newly inflamed eagerly grasps its object, and leaves not a cranny in the mind for another thought than of revenge."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"My friend seemed to blush for his countrymen, assuring me that those whom I saw running away, were only a parcel of musical blockheads, whose passion was merely for sounds, and whose heads were as empty as a fiddle case; those who remain behind, says he, are the true Religious; they make use of ...

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)

"A vast stock of ideas are treasured up in the memory, which it easily produces on various occasions."

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)

Date: w. 1764, 1953

"My mind is like an air-pump which receives and ejects ideas with wonderful facility."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1765

"A Man's House may be so fill'd with Furniture, that he shall want Room to stir; and a Man's Head may be so stuff'd with other People's Thoughts, that his own shall be stifled."

— Anonymous