Date: 1746, 1753

"The SOUL, inhabiting the Brain, or acting, where it doubtless does, immediately behind the Optic Nerves, stamps, instantaneously upon the Eye, and Eyebrow, a struck Image of conceiv'd Idea: And that in Fact it does This, and that it does it, in the very Instant of Conception, every Man must ever...

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1747

"Oh, set me, as a Seal upon thy Heart, / Mark'd for my own, I claim the smallest Part."

— Lennox, née Ramsay, (Barbara) Charlotte (1730/1?-1804)

Date: 1747

"And it must be a thorough Acquaintance with her too, that will ever make an Impression on my Heart."

— Hoadly, Benjamin (1706-1757)

Date: 1748

"Such callous Hearts to no Impression yield, / All-guarded with Corruption's seven-fold Shield;"

— Warton, Thomas, the elder (1688-1745)

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

"But should some swain more skillful than the rest, / his name on this cold marble breast, / Not rolling ages could deface that name."

— Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley [née Lady Mary Pierrepont] (1689-1762)

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)

Date: w. 1740, 1748

"But when your early Care shall have design'd / To plan the Soul and mould the waxen Mind; / When you shall pour upon his tender Breast / Ideas that must stand an Age's Test, / Oh! there imprint with strongest deepest dye / The lovely form of Goddess LIBERTY!"

— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)