Date: Tuesday, August 28, 1753

"To understand the works of celebrated authors, to comprehend their systems, and retain their reasonings, is a task more than equal to common intellects; and he is by no means to be accounted useless or idle, who has stored his mind with acquired knowledge, and can detail it occasionally to other...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1754

"If, for instance, a man was to sweat and labour all the days of his life to fill a chest which was already full, the absurdity of his vain endeavour would be glaring: in the same manner, when the human mind is filled and stuffed with notions, brought thither by fallacious inclinations, there is ...

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

Date: 1754

"All these are Reason's Treasures, Stores of Thought; / Reflection's unexhausted Funds, replete / With Matter for her own delightful Task."

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)

Date: 1754

"Sensation would be of little use to form the understanding, if we had no other faculty than mere passive perception; but without sensation these other faculties would have nothing to operate upon, reflection would have by consequence nothing to reflect upon, and it is by reflection that we multi...

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1755

"By consequence, the several stages of its future perfection and advancement will fundamentally arise from the treasury it retains of all its primitive ideas."

— Sharp, William, Vicar of Long Burton

Date: 1755

"But since the brain doth lodge the pow'rs of sense, / How makes it in the heart those passions spring?"

— Davies [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: March 1756

"The thought-kindling light, / Thy prime production, darts upon my mind / Its vivifying beams, my heart illumines, / And fills my soul with gratitude and Thee."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: 1757

"Let heav'n-born Mercy ever fill thy Breast, / And Truth be there an ever constant Guest."

— Arnold, Cornelius (b. 1714, d. in or after 1758?)

Date: 1757

"The mind of man has naturally a far greater alacrity and satisfaction in tracing resemblances than in searching for differences; because by making resemblances we produce new images, we unite, we create, we enlarge our stock; but in making distinctions we offer no food at all to the imagi...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: Performed Dec 1756, published 1757

"Thou look'st at me, as if thou fain would'st pry / Into my heart. 'Tis open as my speech."

— Home, John (1722-1808)