Date: 1745

"Drink early then, my Friend, at Reason's Bowl, / And fill with wholesome Draughts thy youthful Soul. / If Wine or Gall the Recent Vessel stains, / Each Scent alike the faithful Cask retains."

— Whaley, John (bap. 1710, d. 1745)

Date: 1747

"The figures, which must actuate her, remain / As yet quite uncollected in the brain; / Exterior objects have not furnish' yet / Th' ideal stores which Age is sure to get."

— Cardinal Melchior de Polignac (1661-1741)

Date: 1761

"Abashed and confounded to find my humanity so far debased; to see myself fallen so low from that innate greatness of mind, to which our passion had reciprocally elevated us, I return home at night, with a heart swelling, yet vacant as a ball puffed up with air; sickened with disgust, and sunk in...

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: 1761

"Every thing he sees, every thing he hears, catches his attention, and is stored up in his memory: he keeps a journal of the actions and conversation of men, and from every scene that presents itself, deduces something to enrich his memory."

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: 1788-89

"On the former system, she [the soul] is on a level with the most degraded natures, the receptacle of material species, and the spectator of delusion and non-entity."

— Taylor, Thomas (1758-1835)