Date: 1743

"Still spread a healing mist before the mind; / And lest we err by Wit's wild dancing light, / Secure us kindly in our native night."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1748, 1754

"[T]his Perception is not a Creature of the Mind, but a Ray emanating directly from the Father of Lights, a fair genuine Stamp of his Hand, who impressed every vital and original Energy on the Mind"

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1748, 1754

"[T]he Relation we stand in to God, will irradiate the Mind with the Light of Wisdom, and ennoble it with the Liberty and Dominion of Virtue."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1760

"Dim burns the Lamp of Life; this Breast heaves slow; / My Soul shall soon the last sad Journey go."

— Langhorne,William (1721-1772)

Date: 1761, 1765

"A taste, improv'd by Education, finds / Pleasures where none appear to ruder minds; / Scenes, where the croud but few attractions see, / Affect it in an exquisite degree: / As telescopes, the finer ground, convey / More striking beauties by the visual ray; / Or magnets, as prepar'd the mor...

— Stevenson, William (1730-1783)

Date: 1762

"Often, like the evening-sun, comes the memory of former times on my soul."

— Ossian; Macpherson, James (1736-1796)

Date: 1762

"The soul of Nathos was sad, like the sun in the day of mist, when his face is watry and dim."

— Ossian; Macpherson, James (1736-1796)

Date: 1662, 1762

"This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind; having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart."

— The Church of England

Date: January 19, 1791

"You know them but at a distance, on the statements of those who always flatter the reigning power, and who, amidst their representations of the grievances, inflame your minds against those who are oppressed. These are amongst the effects of unremitted labour, when men exhaust their attention, bu...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)