Date: 1757

"I only told him civilly, Past three o'clock and a cloudy morning!-- [...] --when, heyday! says he, (there he stands, let 'en deny it if he can) and coming up to me--what have we here?-- a human Clock!--a very odd kind of Repeater upon my soul!--one of the hours 'egad strolling about, in a...

— Bacon, Phanuel (1700-1783)

Date: 1758, 1781

"Hence then the Cause of all Defects is seen, / one wrong Movement spoils the whole Machine."

— Hawkins, William (1721-1801)

Date: 1759

"The wheels of the watch are all admirably adjusted to the end for which it was made, the pointing of the hour. All their various motions conspire in the nicest manner to produce this effect. If they were endowed with a desire and intention to produce it, they could not do it better. Yet we never...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"The first turn of mind has at least all the beauty which can belong to the most perfect machine that was ever invented for promoting the most agreeable purpose: and the second all the deformity of the most aukward and clumsy contrivance."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"He might perceive a beauty of this kind in prudence, temperance and good conduct, and a deformity in the opposite behaviour: He might view his own temper and character with that sort of satisfaction with which we consider a well contrived machine, in the one case; or with that sort of distaste a...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"As no Man mind's those Clocks that use to go / Apparently to[o] over fast, or slow."

— Butler, Samuel (1613-1680)

Date: 1759

"He might view his own temper and character with that sort of satisfaction with which we consider a well-contrived machine, in the one case; or with that sort of distaste and dissatisfaction with which we regard a very awkward and clumsy contrivance, in the other."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"If not with Prejudice, and Passion blind, / In Reason's Glass, you will your Error find. / Search the Recesses of the human Soul, / Mark there, what secret Springs her Acts controul."

— Marriott, Thomas (d. 1766)

Date: w. c. 1759-1791

"There are according to a certain medico physical society, certain natural excavations in the head of man, wherein everyone may be supposed to have a sort of twisting mill, or Gig of his own; to work and bring forward his Ideas; and whatever happens either to obstruct or impel the working of this...

— Pratt, Jermyn (d. 1791)

Date: w. c. 1759-1791

"And this in some measure accounts why there are some heads so strange and whimsical, without any fixed Ideas at all, some exceedingly heavy and confusd; some working and whirling along with amazing rapidity, depending in a great measure upon the different movements of the machine as it works and...

— Pratt, Jermyn (d. 1791)