Date: 1755

A sweet idea (of a beloved) may wander through one's thoughts

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

Date: 1755

"When the mind is unchained from necessity, it will range after convenience; when it is left at large in the fields of speculation, it will shift opinions; as any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1757

"If we can direct the lights we derive from such exalted speculations, upon the humbler field of the imagination, whilst we investigate the springs and trace the course of our passions, we may not only communicate to the taste a sort of philosophical solidity, but we may reflect back on severer s...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"Now the imagination is the most extensive province of pleasure and pain, as it is the region of our fears and our hopes, and of all our passions that are connected with them; and whatever is calculated to affect the imagination with these commanding ideas, by force of any original natural impres...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1759

"Your Memory, and Understanding too / Will still acquire new Strength, by reading slow. / The Traveller, who o'er the Country flies, / Few rural Beauties, with Discernment, spies; / Objects, that pass so swift, confound the Mind, / And no distinct Impression leave behind."

— Marriott, Thomas (d. 1766)

Date: 1759

"Incumbered with the notions of others, and impoverished by their abundance, he conceives not the least embryo of new thought; opens not the least vista thro' the gloom of ordinary writers, into the bright walks of rare imagination, and singular design."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1759

"His mighty mind travelled round the intellectual world; and, with a more than eagle's eye, saw, and has pointed out blank spaces, or dark spots in it, on which the human mind never shone."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: September 1, 1759.

"The incursions of troublesome thoughts are often violent and importunate; and it is not easy to a mind accustomed to their inroads to expel them immediately by putting better images into motion; but this enemy of quiet is above all others weakened by every defeat; the reflection which has been o...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1760

"It is true, that the Want of Education, which her Mother's Poverty prevented her from bestowing, in a great Measure depressed those Seeds of Genius which were sown in her; yet, as the Spirit of a SHAKESPEAR would, under the most mountainous Oppression, have breathed forth some of its inextinguis...

— Anonymous

Date: 1760-7

"Indeed there is one thing to be considered, that in Nova Zembla, North Lapland, and in all those cold and dreary tracts of the globe, which lie more directly under the artick and antartick circles,--where the whole province of a man's concernments lies for near nine months together, withi...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)