Date: 1739

"But as the moon reflecting borrow'd day, /Sheds on our shadow'd world a feeble ray: /Some scatter'd beams of Reason law contains, /While Order's rule must be enforc'd by pains"

— Nugent, Robert [or Craggs] (1702-1788)

Date: 1738, 1739

"For tho' right Reason should her Beams display, / And dart new Lustre on our clouded Way; / Unless Philosophy, with antient Strength, / Support her Empire to Life's utmost Length; / Unless, in Passion's Spite, we dare be free, / (What Few have been, and Few will ever be) / That pristine Turn, th...

— Bancks, John (1709-1751)

Date: 1738, 1739

"Reason, like Virtue, comes but with her Shade."

— Bancks, John (1709-1751)

Date: 1739

"Fill our whole Souls with heav'nly Light, / Melt with Seraphick Fire."

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: 1739

"For, O Gustavus, / My Soul is dark, disconsolate and dark; / Sick to the World, and hateful to myself, / I have no Country now."

— Brooke, Henry (c. 1703-1783)

Date: 1741 [1740]; continued in 1741

"But my Weakness of Body made me move so slowly, that it gave Time for a little Reflection, a Ray of Grace, to dart in upon my benighted Mind; and so, when I came to the Pond-side, I sat myself down on the sloping Bank, and began to ponder my wretched Condition: And thus I reason'd with myself."

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

Date: 1741 [1740]; continued in 1741

A mother may "watch the beamy Dawnings of Reason" in her child and direct his or her "little Passions, as they shew themselves, to this or that particular Point of Benefit and Use"

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

Date: 1741

"I [the mind] did but step out, on some weighty affairs, / To visit last night, my good friends in the stars, / When, before I was got half as high as the moon, / You despatched Pain and Languor to hurry me down; / Vi & Armis they seized me, in midst of my flight, / And shut me in caverns as dark...

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1741

"The very Greek Heathens by the Light of Reason were taught to say, [GREEK CHARACTERS], and the Latins, A Jove principium, Musae."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1742

"Now, such ought to be the direction and diffusion of your understanding, not an effusion or emptying of itself, but an extension of it toward even any obstacle that occurs: Not violently and impetuously dashing against it, nor falling aside, but terminating directly on it, and illuminating whate...

— Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180), Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746), and James Moor (bap. 1712, d. 1779)