Date: 1741

"There are are some Persons who complain they cannot remember divine or human Discourses which they hear, when in Truth their Thoughts are wandering half the Time, or they hear with such coldness and Indifferency and a trifling Temper of Spirit, that it is no wonder the Things which are read or s...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"Therefore it is that the Rules of Grammar, and useful Examples of the Variation of Words, and the peculiar Forms of Speech in any Language, are so often appointed by the Master as lessons for the Scholars to be frequently repeated; and they are contracted into Tables for frequent Review, that wh...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"Maronides had got the first hundred Lines of Virgil's 'Æneis' printed upon his Memory so perfectly, that he knew not only the Order and Number of every Verse from one to a hundred in Perfection, but the Order and Number of every Word in each Verse also."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"It is also by this Association of Ideas that we may better imprint any new Idea upon the Memory by joining with it some Circumstance of the Time, Place, Company, &c. wherein we first observed, heard or learnt it."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"Let every thing we desire to remember be fairly and distinctly written and divided into Periods, with large Characters in the Beginning; for by this Means we shall the more readily imprint the Matter and Words on our Minds, and recollect them with a Glance, the more remarkable the Writi...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1745

"The infant Mind is ductile like Wax; you may stamp a fair or ugly Impression upon it, Error or Knowledge, Indolence or Application, Virtue or Vice."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1748, 1777

"This impression of my senses immediately conveys my thought to the person, together with all the surrounding objects. I paint them out to myself as existing at present, with the same qualities and relations, of which I formerly knew them possessed."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"The concurrence of these several views or glimpses imprints the idea more strongly on the imagination; gives it superior force and vigour; renders its influence on the passions and affections more sensible; and in a word, begets that reliance or security, which constitutes the nature of belief a...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: w. c. 1748

"Secondly, Those Characters sink deeper into the Mind of the Reader, and stamp there a perfect Idea of the very Turn of Thought, by which the Originals were actuated, and diversified from each other."

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1748, 1754

"[W]ere the Mind entirely under the Direction of Sense, and impressible only by such Objects as are present, and strike some of the outward Organs, we should then be precisely in the State of the Brute-Creation, and be governed solely by Instinct or Appetite, and have no Power to controul whateve...

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)