Date: 1751, 1777
"The one [reason] discovers objects, as they really stand in nature, without addition or diminution: The other [taste] has a productive faculty, and gilding or staining all natural objects with the colours, borrowed from internal sentiment, raises, in a manner, a new creation."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: June 1751, 1752
"Thou [Eagle] type of wit and sense confin'd, / Cramp'd by the oppressors of the mind, / Who study downward on the ground."
preview | full record— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)
Date: w. 1749, 1751
"O Master of the heart whose magic skill / The close recesses of the Soul can find."
preview | full record— Edwards, Thomas (d. 1757)
Date: 1751
"True philosophy was not known till that time; and it is but justice to say, that commencing from the last year of Cardinal Richelieu, and proceeding to those which immediately succeeded the death of Louis XIV. there came to pass in our arts, in our minds, in our manners, as well as in our govern...
preview | full record— Arouet, François-Marie [known as Voltaire] (1694-1778)
Date: 1751
"Tears gushing again, my heart fluttering as a bird against its wires; drying my eyes again and again to no purpose."
preview | full record— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)
Date: 1751
"If motives be of very different kinds, with regard to strength and influence, which we feel to be the case; it is involved in the very idea of the strongest motive, that it must have the strongest effect in determining the mind. This can no more be doubted of, than that, in a balance, the greate...
preview | full record— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)
Date: 1751
"In other cases, where the field of choice is wider, and where opposite motives counterbalance and work against each other, the mind fluctuates for a while, and feels itself more loose: but, in the end, must as necessarily be determined to the side of the most powerful motive, as the balance, aft...
preview | full record— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)
Date: 1751
"The laws of mind, and the laws of matter, are in this respect perfectly similar; tho', in making the comparison, we are apt to deceive ourselves."
preview | full record— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)
Date: 1751
"A weak motive makes some impression: but, in opposition to one more powerful, it has no effect to determine the mind. In the precise same manner, a small force will not overcome a great resistance; nor the weight of an ounce in one scale, counter-balance a pound in the other."
preview | full record— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)
Date: 1751
"If any Man hath found out a Kind of Motive which doth not affect himself, he hath made a deeper Investigation into the 'Springs, Weights, and Balances' of the human Heart, than I can pretend to."
preview | full record— Brown, John (1715-1766)