Date: 1740

"To the instructed Man [Ideas of Sensation] afford a vast Quantity of Materials to exercise Knowledge on, but without being taught that [end page 26] Knowledge to apply them to artificial Purposes, they would signify no more to us, besides assisting the Instincts to take Care of that Body they we...

— Philalethes [pseud.]

Date: 1743

"We bleed, we tremble; we forget, we smile: / The mind turns fool before the cheek is dry. / Our quick-returning folly cancels all; / As the tide rushing rases what is writ / In yielding sands, and smooths the letter'd shore."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"Are there on earth (let me not call them men) / Who lodge a soul immortal in their breasts; / Unconscious as the mountain of its ore; / Or rock, of its inestimable gem? / When rocks shall melt, and mountains vanish, these / Shall know their treasure; treasure then no more.

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: w. c. 1800, 1805

"These sudden eruptions of the passions of the multitude, spread, like the lava of a volcano, throughout all France, nor could men of correct judgment, who aimed only at reform of abuses, and a renovation in all the departments, check the fury of the torrent."

— Warren, Mercy Otis (1728-1814)

Date: 1830

"To grasp intelligence as this night-like mine or pit in which is stored a world of infinitely many images and representations, yet without being in consciousness, is from the one point of view the universal postulate which bids us treat the notion as concrete, in the way we treat, for example, t...

— Hegel, G. W. F. (1770-1831)

Date: 1992

"Only behind a waterfall of brutal and pleasurable sensations, thought Patrick, accepting the leather-clad menu without bothering to glance up, could he hide from the bloodhounds of his conscience. . There, in the cool recess of the rock, behind that heavy white veil, he would hear them yelping a...

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2006

"When there is no longer any wobble, then the mind is like an unwavering rock, more immovable than a mountain and harder than a diamond."

— Ajahn Brahm [born Peter Betts] (August 7, 1951)