Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"From the wise be far / Such gross unhallow'd pride; nor needs my song / Descend so low; but rather now unfold, / If human thought could reach, or words unfold, / By what mysterious fabric of the mind, / The deep-felt joys and harmony of sound / Result from airy motion; and from shape / The lovel...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: Tuesday, July 3, 1750

"There is yet another danger in this practice: men who cannot deceive others, are very often successful in deceiving themselves; they weave their sophistry till their own reason is entangled, and repeat their positions till they are credited by themselves."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1760-7

"A Man's body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin's lining;--rumple the one--you rumple the other."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Angels and Ministers of grace defend us! cried my father,--can any soul withstand this shock?--No wonder the intellectual web is so rent and tatter'd as we see it; and that so many of our best heads are no better than a puzzled skein of silk,--all perplexity,--all confusion within side."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"It wonderfully explain'd and accounted for the acumen of the Asiatic genius, and that sprightlier turn, and a more penetrating intuition of minds, in warmer climates; not from the loose and common-place solution of a clearer sky, and a more perpetual sun-shine, &c.--which, for aught he knew, mig...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"With all my precautions, how was my system turned topside turvy in the womb with my child! his head exposed to the hand of violence, and a pressure of 470 pounds averdupois weight acting so perpendicularly upon its apex---that at this hour 'tis ninety per Cent. insurance, that the fine network o...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1761

"A veil of wisdom and honour makes so many folds about her heart, that it is impenetrable to human eyes, even to her own."

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

Date: 1761

"Happy in exposing your follies only to your friends, make haste, and I will wait for you here; but be sure you do not return, till you have removed that fatal veil which is woven in your brain."

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

Date: 1768

"I could not help looking for some time at him as I sat in the remise--the more I look'd at him, his croix, and his basket, the stronger they wove themselves into my brain."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1774

"A learned parson, rusting in his cell, at Oxford or Cambridge, will reason admirably well upon the nature of man; will profoundly analyze the head, the heart, the reason, the will, the passions, the senses, the sentiments, and all those subdivisions of we know not what; and yet, unfortunately, h...

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)