Date: 1746; December 17, 1747 [actually January, 1748]

"No more to fabled names confin’d, / To Thee! Supreme, all-perfect mind, / My thoughts direct their flight: / Wisdom’s thy gift, and all her force / From Thee deriv’d, unchanging source / Of intellectual light!"

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1747

"Her Mind does all their glorious Beams dispense, / Bright as they are they owe their Rays to Sense."

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

Date: 1748

"In Soto's bosom you may find / The glimmering of a worthy mind: / 'Tis but a faint and feeble ray, / Imperfect as the dawning day."

— Leapor, Mary (1722-1746)

Date: 1748, 1777

"They [these impressions] are not only placed in a full light themselves, but may throw light on their correspondent ideas, which lie in obscurity."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

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: w. 1740, 1748

"Thirsting for Knowledge, but to know the right, / Thro' judgment's optick guide th' illusive sight, / To let in rays on Reason's darkling cell, / And Prejudice's lagging mists dispel."

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

Date: 1748, 1749

"I always use the word imagine, because I am of the opinion that everything is imagined, and that all the parts of the soul may be justly reduced to the imagination only, which forms them all; and thus the judgment, reason, and memory are not absolute faculties of the soul, but real modifications...

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"Have we one argument of this sort to convince us that man alone is enlighten'd with the rays of reason, from which all other creatures are excluded?"

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1749

"Yet should thy Soul indulge the gen'rous Heat, / Till captive Science yields her last Retreat / Should Reason guide thee with her brightest Ray, / And pour on misty Doubt resistless Day; / Should no false Kindness lure to loose Delight, / Nor Praise relax, nor Difficulty fright; / Should temptin...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)