Date: 1754

"But yet so difficult is the intellectual commerce, so narrow the intellectual fund, that the wisest men are frequently obliged to employ their money like counters, and their counters like money, in one case, however, without loss, in the other without fraud. We may be said to do the first, that ...

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

Date: 1754

"It is hard for another reason; because imagination, whose talents are neither precision nor propriety, not the former at least, is employed in the application of one of these sets of ideas and words to the other, and because it rarely happens that great heat of imagination, and great coolness of...

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

Date: 1754

"Such they may be called, for though foreign ideas divert the attention of the mind, when they break in unsought and by violence, they help it often when they have been sought and are admitted by choice."

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

Date: 1761, 1765

"If Prejudices rule with tyrant sway, / Teach them the voice of Reason to obey."

— Stevenson, William (1730-1783)

Date: 1761, 1765

"Labour and Want (unhospitable twain) / Chill not the current in Life's salient vein; / Nor damp the spirits, else of sprightly cast, / Nor check the nobler passions of the breast; / Nor blunt the fine Sensation's tender edge, / Which man's chief pride philosophers allege. / Thus some fair ...

— Stevenson, William (1730-1783)

Date: 1761, 1765

"A taste, improv'd by Education, finds / Pleasures where none appear to ruder minds; / Scenes, where the croud but few attractions see, / Affect it in an exquisite degree: / As telescopes, the finer ground, convey / More striking beauties by the visual ray; / Or magnets, as prepar'd the mor...

— Stevenson, William (1730-1783)

Date: 1765

"Reason ne'er weighs the beauties of the mind, / If but the sordid balance sinks with gold!"

— Stevenson, William (1730-1783)

Date: 1773

"Till every worldly thought within me dies, / And earth's gay pageants vanish from my eyes; / Till all my sense is lost in infinite, / And one vast object fills my aching sight."

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1773

"Instead of contemplating our own fancied perfections, or even real superiority with self-complacence, religion will teach us to 'look into ourselves, and fear:' the best of us, God knows, have enough to fear, if we honestly search into all the dark recesses of the heart, and bring out every thou...

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: 1773

"By accustoming yourself thus to conquer and disappoint your anger, you will, by degrees, find it grow weak and manageable, so as to leave your reason at liberty."

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)