Date: December 29, 1759

"In childhood, while our minds are yet unoccupied, religion is impressed upon them, and the first years of almost all who have been well educated are passed in a regular discharge of the duties of piety."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1760

"I found the spirit very busy, though I thought somewhat odly employed: she was running over a number of niches, or impressions, on the fibres of the brain, some of which I observed she renewed with such force, that she almost effaced others, which she passed over untouched, though interspersed a...

— Johnstone, Charles (c.1719-c.1800)

Date: 1760

"This place, where we are, is the seat of memory; and these traces, which you see me running over thus, are the impressions made on the brain by a communication of the impressions made on the senses by external objects."

— Johnstone, Charles (c.1719-c.1800)

Date: 1760

"These first impressions are called ideas, which are lodged in this repository of the memory, in these marks, by running which over, I can raise the same ideas, when I please, which differ from their first appearance only in this, that, on their return, they come with the familiarity of a former ...

— Johnstone, Charles (c.1719-c.1800)

Date: 1760

"With how quick a succession, do days, months and years pass over our heads? -- how truly like a shadow that departeth do they flee away insensibly, and scarce leave an impression with us?"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Honours, like impressions upon coin, may give an ideal and local value to a bit of base metal; but Gold and Silver will pass all the world over without any other recommendation than their own weight."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

One may try to "so manage it, as to convey but the same impressions to every other brain, which the occurrences themselves excite in [his] own"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"When Dolly has indited her epistle to Robin, and has thrust her arm into the bottom of her pocket hanging by her right-side;--take that opportunity to recollect that the organs and faculties of perception, can, by nothing in this world, be so aptly typified and explained as by that one thing whi...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Secondly, slight and transient impressions made by objects when the said organs are not dull."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"I was but ten years old when this happened;--but whether it was, that the action itself was more in unison to my nerves at that age of pity, which instantly set my whole frame into one vibration of most pleasurable sensation;--or how far the manner and expression of it might go towards it;--or i...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)