Date: 1744

"Whence, then, those thoughts? those towering thoughts that flew / Such monstrous heights?"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"Ye towering hopes, abortive energies! / That toss and struggle in my lying breast, / To scale the skies, and build presumptions there, / As I were heir of an eternity."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"Sense! take the rein; blind Passion! drive us on; / And, Ignorance! befriend us on our way; / Ye new, but truest patrons of our peace! Yes; give the Pulse full empire; live the Brute, / Since as the Brute we die."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1751

"Mankind would be in a perpetual reverie; ideas would be constantly floating in the mind; and no man be able to connect his ideas with himself."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1751

"A reverie is nothing else, but a wandering of the mind through its ideas, without carrying along the perception of self."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1751

"Frightful ideas croud into the mind, and augment the fear, which is occasioned by darkness."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1756

"Many Things have been said, and very well undoubtedly, on the Subjection in which we should preserve our Bodies to the Government of our Understanding; but enough has not been said upon the Restraint which our bodily Necessities ought to lay on the extravagant Sublimities, and excentrick Rovings...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1788

Humanity "Assists thy roving fancy in its flight, / To crown thy airy sallies with delight."

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)