Date: 1748

"This observation, delivered with a profound sigh, made my heart throb with violence; a crowd of confused ideas rushed upon my imagination, which, while I endeavoured to unravel, my uncle perceived my absence of thought, and tapping me on the shoulder, said, "Oons! are you asleep, Rory!""

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1748

"This first tumult subsiding, a crowd of flattering ideas rushed upon my imagination"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1748

"I was utterly confounded at this sudden transition, which affected me more than any reverse I had formerly felt; and a crowd of incoherent ideas rushed so impetuously upon my imagination, that my reason could neither separate nor connect them;"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1748, 1777

"You afterwards become so enamoured of this offspring of your brain, that you imagine it impossible, but he must produce something greater and more perfect than the present scene of things, which is so full of ill and disorder."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1747-8

"If in look, if in speech, a girl waves way to undue levity, depend upon it, the devil has got one of his cloven feet in her heart already."

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1747-8

"Yet her charming body is not equally organized. The unequal partners pull two ways; and the divinity within her tears her silken frame."

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1748, 1754

"And indeed the Practice of it is generally its own Reward; by expelling from the Mind the most dreadful Intruders upon its Repose, those rancorous Passions which are begot and nursed by Resentment, and by disarming and even subduing every Enemy one has, except such as have nothing left of Men bu...

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1748, 1754

"These Objects, or the Images of them, passing in review before the Mind, do, by a necessary Law of our Nature, call forth another and nobler Set of Affections, as Admiration, Esteem, Love, Honour, Gratitude, Benevolence, and others of the like Tribe."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1733, 1748

"O falsely deemed the foe of sacred wit! / Thou [Memory], who the nurse and guardian art of it, / Laying it up till season due and fit."

— Pilkington, Laetitia (c. 1709-1750)

Date: 1748, 1749

"If reason is the slave of depraved, or distracted sense, how then can it be expected, that at that time it should be governor?"

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)