Date: 1736, 1743

"Th' identick Shape thy Fancy would retain, / Engraven in eternal Characters / While Memory holds its Empire in the Brain."

— Wesley, Samuel, the Younger (1691-1739)

Date: 1736

"Philosophy was incapable of affording her any Relief, and all her Reason served only to paint the Unhappiness of her Condition in the stronger Colours."

— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)

Date: 1737

"Whatever fancy paints, invention pours, / Judgment digests, the well tuned bosom feels, / Truth natural, moral, or divine, has taught, / The virtues dictate, or the Muses sing."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1738

"The studious Eye, that runs [William's] Labours o'er, / Shall print his Image on the grateful Mind"

— Boyse, Samuel (1708-1749)

Date: January 1739

"On the other hand, impressions and passions are susceptible of an entire union, and, like colours, may be blended so perfectly together, that each of them may lose itself, and contribute only to vary that uniform impression which arises from the whole."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: September 17, 1739

"There are different ways of examining the Mind as well as the Body. One may consider it either as an Anatomist or as a Painter; either to discover its most secret Springs & Principles or to describe the Grace & Beauty of its Actions."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1740

"Michael Angelo used to say, that a Statuary was a Man who only pared off Superfluities, since every Block of Marble contained in it all possible Forms; but without a Phidias, a Praxiteles, or a Michael Angelo himself, the Marble will lie for ever rude shapeless Mass i...

— Philalethes [pseud.]

Date: 1740

"In a Word, I may palliate and soften as much as I please; but upon an honest Examination of my Heart, I am afraid the same Vanity which makes even homely People employ Painters to preserve a flattering Record of their Persons, has seduced me to print off this Chiaro Oscuro of my Mind."

— Cibber, Colley (1671-1757)

Date: 1740

"This Work, I say, shall not only contain the various Impressions of my Mind, (as in Louis the Fourteenth his Cabinet you have seen the growing Medals of his Person from Infancy to Old Age,) but shall likewise include with them the Theatrical History of my Own Time, from my first Appearance on th...

— Cibber, Colley (1671-1757)

Date: 1741 [1740]; continued in 1741

"And all this time improve myself too, not only in Science, but in Nature, by tracing in the little Babes what all Mankind are, and have been, from Infancy to riper Years"

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