Date: November, 1762; 1797

"This reflection was so strongly impressed upon my mind, that T'was able to employ the succeeding morning in setting down the particulars of a dream occasioned by it."

— Thornton, Bonnell (1725-1768)

Date: January 1762

"Sans cet art, mon âme se pliant avec peine à des biais chimériques, l’illusion ne serait que momentanée et l’impression faible et passagère. [Without this art, my mind would easily take to the paths of fantasy, there would be only a fleeting illusion and a faint, passing impression.]"

— Diderot, Denis (1713-1784)

Date: January 1762

"Richardson sème dans les cœurs des germes de vertu qui y restent d’abord oisifs et tranquilles: ils y sont secrètement, jusqu’à ce qu’il se présente une occasion qui les remue et les fasse éclore. [Richardson sows in our hearts the seeds of virtue which at first remain still and inactive: their ...

— Diderot, Denis (1713-1784)

Date: January 1762

"C’est lui qui porte le flambeau au fond de la caverne; c’est lui qui apprend à discerner les motifs subtils et déshonnêtes qui se cachent et se dérobent sous d’autres motifs qui sont honnêtes et qui se hâtent de se montrer les premiers. Il souffle sur le fantôme sublime qui se présente à l’entré...

— Diderot, Denis (1713-1784)

Date: 1762

"The like false reckoning of time may proceed from an opposite state of mind. In a reverie, where ideas float at random without making any impression, time goes on unheeded and the reckoning is lost."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1763

"Perception cannot be made up of no perceptions; nor received by a number of atoms jointly, unless received by each of them singly [no more than] whispers heard by a thousand men can make together a [resounding] audible voice"

— Tucker, Abraham (1705-1774)

Date: 1763

"if the King were to incorporate six hundred men into a regiment, there would not be six hundred and one Beings therefore, one for the regiment, and one for each of the men [so] neither when a multiple of atoms is run together to form a human body, is there a Being more than there was before: nor...

— Tucker, Abraham (1705-1774)

Date: 1763

"The mind of man is, at first, a kind of tabula rasa; or like a piece of blank paper, and bears no original inscriptions, when we come into the world; we owe all the characters afterwards drawn upon it, to the impressions made upon our senses; to education, custom, and the like."

— Fielding, John, Sir (1721-1780)

Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)

"The power which the mind evidently has of moving the various parts of the body by nerves inserted in the muscles is truly wonderful, seeing the mind neither knows the muscles to be moved, nor the machinery, by which the motion in it is to be produced: so that it is as if a musician should always...

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)

Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)

"When the senses are gently and naturally shut up, and the command over the body intermitted, as in sleep, if we think at all we are said to dream; and generally wander through airy tracks of thought, which have no agreement with each other, nor are at all corrected by the judgment."

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)