Date: January 1762

"C’est lui qui porte le flambeau au fond de la caverne; c’est lui qui apprend à discerner les motifs subtils et déshonnêtes qui se cachent et se dérobent sous d’autres motifs qui sont honnêtes et qui se hâtent de se montrer les premiers. Il souffle sur le fantôme sublime qui se présente à l’entré...

— Diderot, Denis (1713-1784)

Date: 1763

"Perception cannot be made up of no perceptions; nor received by a number of atoms jointly, unless received by each of them singly [no more than] whispers heard by a thousand men can make together a [resounding] audible voice"

— Tucker, Abraham (1705-1774)

Date: 1763

"if the King were to incorporate six hundred men into a regiment, there would not be six hundred and one Beings therefore, one for the regiment, and one for each of the men [so] neither when a multiple of atoms is run together to form a human body, is there a Being more than there was before: nor...

— Tucker, Abraham (1705-1774)

Date: 1763

"I know not, madam, what I either hear or see, a thousand things are crowding on my imagination; while, like one just wakened from a dream, I doubt which is reality, which delusion."

— Bickerstaff, Isaac (b. 1733, d. after 1808)

Date: 1763

"No--'tis the tale which angry Conscience tells, / When She with more than tragic horror swells / Each circumstance of guilt; when stern, but true, / She brings bad actions forth into review; / And, like the dread hand-writing on the wall, / Bids late Remorse awake at Reason's call, / Arm'd at al...

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

"This tender, this exquisite affection, has diffused a spirit through our whole lives, and given a charm to the most common occurrences; a charm to which the dulness of apathy, and the fever of guilty passion, are equally strangers."

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1764

"But behold, this soul of thought frequently has the ascendancy over the animal soul. The thinking soul orders its hands to grasp, and they grasp. It does not tell its heart to beat, its blood to run, its chyle to form; all these things happen without it: so here we have two perplexed souls which...

— Arouet, François-Marie [known as Voltaire] (1694-1778)

Date: 1764

"Have I well weigh'd the great, the noble part / I'm now to play? have I explored my heart, / That labyrinth of fraud, that deep, dark cell, / Where, unsuspected, e'en by me, may dwell / Ten thousand follies?"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1764

"[I]n his breast, / Crowded with follies, Honour found no room"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: January, 1764; 1774

Genius "Turns rebel to dame reason's throne / And holds no judgment like his own."

— Lloyd, Robert (bap. 1733, d. 1764)