Date: 1754

"If I cannot, draw out Cacus from his Den; I may pluck the Villain from my own Breast. I cannot cleanse the Stables of Augeas; but I may cleanse my own Heart from Filth and Impurity: I may demolish the Hydra of Vices within me; and should be careful too, that while I lop off ...

— Hay, William (1695-1755)

Date: 1754

"And let every deformed Person comfort himself with reflecting; that tho' his Soul hath not the most convenient and beautiful Apartment, yet that it is habitable: that the Accommodation will serve in an Inn upon the Road: that he is but Tenant for Life, or (more properly) at Will: and that, while...

— Hay, William (1695-1755)

Date: 1754

"Our simple ideas, and even our complex ideas, and notions return sometimes of themselves, we know not why, nor how, mechanically, as it were, uncalled by the mind, and often to the disturbance of it in the pursuit of other ideas, to which these intruders are foreign."

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1754

"Intellect, the artificer, works lamely without his proper instrument, sense; which is the case when he works on moral ideas."

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1755

"Thoughts come crouding in so fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to choose or to reject."

— Dryden [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1755

"Of sorriest fancies your companions making, / Using those thoughts which should indeed have died / With them they think on."

— Shakespeare [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1755

"When she rates things, and moves from ground to ground, / The name of reason she obtains by this; / But when reason she the truth has found, / And standeth fixed, she understanding is."

— Davies [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1755

"Ideas of the same race, though not exactly alike, are sometimes so little different, that no words can express the dissimilitude, though the mind easily perceives it, when they are exhibited together; and sometimes there is such a confusion of acceptations, that discernment is wearied, and disti...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1755

"My heart was free from care: / Love was a stranger to my breast"

— Derrick, Samuel (1724-1769)

Date: 1756, 1793

"Domestic troubles long my mind oppress'd, / And made the muse a stranger to my breast"

— Blacklock, Thomas (1721-1791)