Date: 1760-7

"It is curious to observe the triumph of slight incidents over the mind:--What incredible weight they have in forming and governing our opinions, both of men and things,--that trifles light as air, shall waft a belief into the soul, and plant it so immoveably within it,--that Euclid's de...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1761

"By no forc'd laws his passions were confin'd, / For conscience kept his heart, and calm'd his mind / Peace o'er the world her blessed sway maintain'd, / And e'en in desarts smiling Plenty reign'd."

— Telescope, Tom [pseud.]

Date: 1761, 1765

"If Prejudices rule with tyrant sway, / Teach them the voice of Reason to obey."

— Stevenson, William (1730-1783)

Date: 1762, 1781

"Delusion o'er my Mind usurps Command, / And rules each Sense with Fancy's magic Wand."

— Keate, George (1729-1797)

Date: 1762-3

"By tyrants awed, who never find / The passage to their people's mind; / To whom the joy was never known / Of planting in the heart their throne."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762-3

"The senses all must homage pay; / Hither they all must tribute bring, / And prostrate fall before their king."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762-3

"With these grave fops, whose system seems / To give up certainty for dreams / The eye of man is understood / As for no other purpose good / Than as a door, through which, of course, / Their passage crowding objects force; / A downright usher, to admit / New-comers to the court of Wit."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

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

"That mind is said to be possessed of NATURAL LIBERTY, or liberty of choice, which is so constituted, as that its volitions shall not be invincibly determined by any foreign cause or consideration whatever offered to it, but by its own sovereign pleasure."

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)

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

"PHILOSOPHICAL LIBERTY consists in a prevailing disposition to act according to the dictates of reason; i. e. in such a manner, as shall, all things considered, most effectually promote our happiness. A disposition to act contrary to this is MENTAL SERVITUDE: and when the mind is equally...

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)

Date: 1768

"In saying this, I was making not so much La Fleur's eloge, as my own, having been in love with one princess or another almost all my life, and I hope I shall go on so, till I die, being firmly persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)