Date: 1767

His existence is now at last in no danger of comminution, but then his powers are absolutely gone and quite evaporated. In a word, he is as dry and empty as a beer barrel after it has been some time set a-broach to a drunken mob at a general election."

— Campbell, Archibald (bap. 1724, d. 1780)

Date: 1768

"The deep Philsopher who turns mankind / Quite inside outwards, and dissects the mind, / Wou'd look but whimsical and strangely out, / To grudge some Quack his treatise on the gout."

— Wilkie, William (1721-1772)

Date: 1768

"How the history of Utopia holds up in the mirror of fancy, the picture of a well policied state, its arts, its laws, and government?"

— Wynne, Edward (1734-1784)

Date: 1779

"All our ideas derived from the senses are confusedly false and illusive; and cannot therefore be supposed to have place in a supreme intelligence: and as the ideas of internal sentiment, added to those of the external senses, compose the whole furniture of human understanding, we may conc...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1779

"A man's natural inclination works incessantly upon him ... The force of the greatest gravity, say the philosophers, is infinitely small, in comparison of that of the least impulse: yet it is certain, that the smallest gravity will, in the end, prevail above a great impulse; because no strokes or...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1780

"When they came to Momus, whom they had chosen umpire, after a careful examination of every performance, he found great fault with Vulcan (what he said of the rest it matters not), for not making a door in his man's breast, to open and let us know what he willed, and thought, and Whether he spoke...

— Francklin, Thomas (1721–1784); Lucian (b.c. 125, d. after 180)

Date: 1780

"His face is ever before my eyes, and his voice still sounding in my ear; for, as the comic poet says, he left a sting in the minds of his hearers."

— Francklin, Thomas (1721–1784); Lucian (b.c. 125, d. after 180)

Date: 1780

"The face is certainly the best index of the mind, and the passions as forcibly expressed by the features as by the words and gesture of the performer."

— Francklin, Thomas (1721–1784); Lucian (b.c. 125, d. after 180)

Date: 1780

"For such men the city alone is the proper habitation; where every street and market-place is full of enjoyments; there pleasure enters in at every gate: through the eye, the ear, the taste, the smell; through every part and every sense she gains admittance, and not a path remains that is not wid...

— Francklin, Thomas (1721–1784); Lucian (b.c. 125, d. after 180)

Date: 1780

"There meet together, adultery, avarice, perjury, and every other vice; the soul is overwhelmed beneath them, and justice, modesty, and virtue are no more: bereft of these, the mind becomes dry and barren, or only teems with savage and brutal extravagance."

— Francklin, Thomas (1721–1784); Lucian (b.c. 125, d. after 180)