Date: 1785

"Sir, Dr Cheyne has laid down a rule to himself on this subject, which should be imprinted on every mind: 'To neglect nothing to secure my eternal peace, more than if I had been certified I should die within the day: nor to mind any thing that my secular obligations and duties demanded of me, les...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"The repetition of words which he had so often previously used, made a strong impression on my imagination; and, by a natural course of thinking, led me to consider how our present adventures would appear to me at a future period."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"I beg leave to say something upon second sight, of which I have related two instances, as they impressed my mind at the time."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"To entertain a visionary notion that one sees a distant or future event, may be called superstition; but the correspondence of the fact or event with such an impression on the fancy, though certainly very wonderful, if proved, has no more connection with superstition, than magnetism or electrici...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: December 10, 1784; 1785

"I would rather wish a Student, as soon as he goes abroad, to employ himself upon whatever he has been incited to, by any immediate impulse, than to go sluggishly about a prescribed task; whatever he does in such a state of mind little advantage accrues from it, as nothing sinks deep enough to le...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 11, 1786; 1787

"A man endowed with this faculty, feels and acknowledges the truth, though it is not always in his power, perhaps, to give a reason for it; because he cannot recollect and bring present before him all the materials that gave birth to his opinion; for very many and very intricate considerations, m...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 11, 1786; 1787

"A landskip thus conducted, under the influence of a Poetical mind, will have the same superiority over the more ordinary and common views, as Milton's Allegro and Penseroso have over a cold prosaic narration or description; and such a Picture would make a more forcible impression on the mind tha...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1788

"But in general, I know of no method of getting money, not even that of robbing for it upon the highway, which has so direct a tendency to efface the moral sense, to rob the heart of every gentle and humane disposition, and to harden it, like steel, against all impressions of sensibility."

— Newton, John (1725-1807)

Date: 1789

"They [African customs] had been implanted in me with great care, and made an impression on my mind, which time could not erase, and which all the adversity and variety of fortune I have since experienced served only to rivet and record; for, whether the love of one's country be real or imaginary...

— Equiano, Olaudah [Gustavus Vasa] (c. 1745-1797)

Date: 1789

"I had a mind on which every thing uncommon made its full impression, and every event which I considered as marvellous."

— Equiano, Olaudah [Gustavus Vasa] (c. 1745-1797)