Date: 1741

"But such is the nature of the human mind, that it always lays hold on every mind that approaches it; and as it is wonderfully fortified by an unanimity of sentiments, so is it shocked and disturbed by any contrariety."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1742

"Not the gross act alone employs her pen; / She reconnoitres Fancy's airy band, / A watchful foe! the formidable spy, / Listening, o'erhears the whispers of our camp; / Our dawning purposes of heart explores, / And steals our embryos of iniquity."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Sure the rising sun / O'er the cærulean convex of the sea, / With equal brightness and with equal warmth / Might rowl his fiery orb; nor yet the soul / Thus feel her frame expanded, and her powers / Exulting in the splendor she beholds; / Like a young conqueror moving through the pomp / Of...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1745

"Imagination is the Paphian shop, / Where feeble Happiness, like Vulcan, lame, / Bids foul Ideas, in their dark recess, / And hot as hell, (which kindled the black fires,) / With wanton art, those fatal arrows form / Which murder all thy time, health, wealth, and fame."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: Saturday, November 3, 1750

"The philosophers having found an easy victory over those desires which we produce in ourselves, and which terminate in some imaginary state of happiness unknown and unattainable, proceeded to make further inroads upon the heart, and attacked at last our senses and our instincts."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1756

"Not only their Understandings labour continually, which is the severest Labour, but their Hearts are torn by the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all Passions, by Avarice, by Ambition, by Fear and Jealousy. No part of the Mind has Rest. Power gradually extirpates from the Mind every hu...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: September 1, 1759.

"The incursions of troublesome thoughts are often violent and importunate; and it is not easy to a mind accustomed to their inroads to expel them immediately by putting better images into motion; but this enemy of quiet is above all others weakened by every defeat; the reflection which has been o...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1760-7

"Whether they were above my uncle Toby's reason,--or contrary to it,-- or that his brain was like wet tinder, and no spark could possibly take hold,--or that it was so full of saps, mines, blinds, curtins, and such military disqualifications to his seeing clearly into Prignitz and Scroderus's doc...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"But the heat gradually increasing, and in a few seconds more getting beyond the point of all sober pleasure, and then advancing with all speed into the regions of pain,--the soul of Phutatorius, together with all his ideas, his thoughts, his attention, his imagination, judgment, resolution, deli...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1761

"The image of Eloisa, never to be erased from my mind, shall be my shield, and render my soul invulnerable."

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)