Date: 1744

"To store up treasure with incessant toil,-- / This is man's province, this his highest praise, / To this great end keen Instinct stings him on. / To guide that Instinct, Reason! is thy charge; / 'Tis thine to tell us where true treasure lies."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"Yet still, through their disgrace [the passions'], no feeble ray / Of greatness shines, and tells us whence they fell: / But these (like that fallen monarch [Adam] when reclaim'd) / When Reason moderates the rein aright, / Shall re-ascend, remount their former sphere, / Where once they soar'd il...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"This all-pervading, this all-conscious soul, / This particle of energy Divine, / Which travels Nature, flies from star to star, / And visits gods, and emulates their powers, / For ever is extinguish'd"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"In the coarse drudgeries and sinks of Sense, / Your souls have quite worn out the make of Heaven, / By vice new-cast, and creatures of your own."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"Can such a soul contract itself, to gripe / A point of no dimension, of no weight?"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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...

— 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...

— 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."

— 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."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1756

"Yet we have implanted in us by Providence Ideas, Axioms, Rules, of what is pious, just, fair, honest, which no Political Craft, nor learned Sophistry, can entirely expel from our Breasts."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)