Date: Wednesday, March 7, 1711

"The Reflections of such Men are so delicate upon all Occurrences which they are concern'd in, that they should be expos'd to more than ordinary Infamy and Punishment, for offending against such quick Admonitions as their own Souls give them, and blunting the fine Edge of their Minds in such a Ma...

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Wednesday, March 7, 1711

"The Reflections of such Men are so delicate upon all Occurrences which they are concern'd in, that they should be expos'd to more than ordinary Infamy and Punishment, for offending against such quick Admonitions as their own Souls give them, and blunting the fine Edge of their Minds in such a Ma...

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: 1692

"I tell you, Madam, Love in my Breast is with greater difficulty remov'd, than Foreign Aids out of the distressed Kingdom they are call'd in to assist; Love has subdued me all, and I am entirely a Slave."

— Gildon, Charles (1665-1724)

Date: 1713

"My Memory is pretty well stocked with Terms of Art, and I can talk unintelligibly."

— Gay, John (1685-1732)

Date: 1687, 1691

"The Cardinal who pretends to read the Souls of Men, and who is inferior to none perhaps in this Art, caused this Person who had so long attended, to be called to him, and thus spake to him."

— Marana, Giovanni Paolo (1642-1693); Anonymous [William Bradshaw (fl. 1700) or Robert Midgley (1655?-1723)?]

Date: 1687, 1691

"The Cardinal who pretends to read the Souls of Men, and who is inferior to none perhaps in this Art, caused this Person who had so long attended, to be called to him, and thus spake to him."

— Marana, Giovanni Paolo (1642-1693); Anonymous [William Bradshaw (fl. 1700) or Robert Midgley (1655?-1723)?]

Date: 1814

"The mind of a child is like the acorn; its powers are folded up, they do not yet appear, but they are all there."

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

Date: 1765

"In Christ, his work and word / I trust, why should ye say, / That like a tim'rous bird / My soul must wing her way, / And flee from those, whose deadly skill / At worst can but the body kill?"

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: 1765

"In Christ, his work and word / I trust, why should ye say, / That like a tim'rous bird / My soul must wing her way, / And flee from those, whose deadly skill / At worst can but the body kill?"

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: 1759

"Our sense of the horror and dreadful atrocity of such conduct, the delight which we take in hearing that it was properly punished, the indignation which we feel when it escapes this due retaliation, our whole sense and feeling, in short, of its ill desert, of the propriety and fitness of inflict...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"But when a father fails in the ordinary degree of parental affection towards a son; when a son seems to want that filial reverence which might be expected to his father; when brothers are without the usual degree of brotherly affection; when a man shuts his breast against compassion, and refuses...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"The thought of this perpetually haunts him, and fills him with terror and amazement."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"To enforce the observation of justice, therefore, nature has implanted in the human breast that consciousness of ill-desert, those terrors of merited punishment which attend upon its violation, as the great safe-guards of the association of mankind, to protect the weak, to curb the violent, and ...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"The wheels of the watch are all admirably adjusted to the end for which it was made, the pointing of the hour. All their various motions conspire in the nicest manner to produce this effect. If they were endowed with a desire and intention to produce it, they could not do it better. Yet we never...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"Nature, however, when she implanted the seeds of this irregularity in the human breast, seems, as upon all other occasions, to have intended the happiness and perfection of the species."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"Sentiments, designs, affections, though it is from these that according to cool reason human actions derive their whole merit or demerit, are placed by the great Judge of hearts beyond the limits of every human jurisdiction, and are reserved for the cognizance of his own unerring tribunal."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"It is what is properly called vanity, and is the foundation of the most ridiculous and contemptible vices, the vices of affectation and common lying; follies which, if experience did not teach us how common they are, one should imagine the least spark of common sense would save us from."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"Their superficial weakness and trivial folly hinder them from ever turning their eyes inwards, or from seeing themselves in that despicable point of view in which their own consciences should tell them that they would appear to every body, if the real truth should ever come to be known."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"The thoughts of that admiration, whose effects they were never to feel, played about their hearts, banished from their breasts the strongest of all natural fears, and transported them to perform actions which seem almost beyond the reach of human nature."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"These natural pangs of an afrighted conscience are the daemons, the avenging furies which in this life haunt the guilty, which allow them neither quiet nor repose, which often drive them to despair and distraction, from which no assurance of secrecy can protect them, from which no principles of ...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"Unfortunately this moral looking-glass is not always a very good one. Common looking-glasses, it is said, are extremely deceitful, and by the glare which they throw over the face, conceal from the partial eyes of the person many deformities which are obvious to every body besides. But there is n...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"The violent emotions which at that time agitate us, discolour our views of things, even when we are endeavouring to place ourselves in the situation of another, and to regard the objects that interest us, in the light which they will naturally appear to him. The fury of our own passions constant...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of self-delusion, which covers from his view the deformities of his own conduct. Rather than see our o...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"The great judge of the world, has, for the wisest reasons, thought proper to interpose, between the weak eye of reason, and the throne of his eternal justice, a degree of obscurity and darkness, which though it does not intirely cover the great tribunal from the view of mankind, yet renders the ...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"But whatever may be the authority of this inferiour tribunal which is continually before their eyes, if at any time it should decide contrary to those principles and rules, which nature has established for regulating its judgments, men feel that they may appeal from this unjust decision, and cal...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"The applause of the whole world will avail but little if our own conscience condemn us; and the disapprobation of all mankind is not capable of oppressing us, when we are absolved by the tribunal within our own breast, and when our mind tells us that mankind are in the wrong."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"But though this tribunal within the breast be thus the supreme arbiter of all our action, though it can reverse the decisions of all mankind with regard to our character and conduct, and mortify us amidst the applause or support us under the censure of the world; yet, if we enquire into the orig...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"In order to defend ourselves from such partial judgments, we soon learn to set up in our own minds a judge between ourselves and those we live with."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"On the contrary, if the man within condemns us, the loudest acclamations of mankind appear but as the noise of ignorance and folly, and whenever we assume the character of this impartial judge, we cannot avoid viewing our actions with his distaste and dissatisfaction."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"Such persons are not accustomed to consult the judge within concerning the opinion which they ought to form of their own conduct."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"This inmate of the breast, this abstract man, the representative of mankind, and substitute of the Deity, whom nature has constituted the supreme judge of all their actions is seldom appealed to by them."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"The imagination of the spectator throws upon it either the one colour or the other, according either to his habits of thinking, or to the favour or dislike which he may bear to the person whose conduct he is considering."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"But though man has, in this manner, been rendered the immediate judge of mankind, he has been rendered so only in the first instance; and an appeal lies from his sentence to a much higher tribunal, to the tribunal of their own consciences, to that of the supposed impartial and well-informed spec...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"The jurisdiction of the man without is founded altogether in the desire of actual praise, and in the aversion to actual blame. The jurisdiction of the man within is founded altogether in the desire of praiseworthiness, and in the aversion to blameworthiness; in the desire of possessing those qua...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"In such cases, this demigod within the breast appears, like the demigods of the poets, though partly of immortal, yet partly too of mortal extraction. When his judgments are steadily and firmly directed by the sense of praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, he seems to act suitably to his divine ...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"It is only by consulting this judge within, that we can see whatever relates to ourselves in its proper shape and dimensions, or that we can make any proper comparison between our own interests and those of other men."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"But though the approbation of his own conscience can scarce, upon some extraordinary occasions, content the weakness of man; though the testimony of the supposed impartial spectator of the great inmate of the breast cannot always alone support him; yet the influence and authority of this princip...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"As to the eye of the body, objects appear great or small, not so much according to their real dimensions as according to the nearness or distance of their situation; so do they likewise to what may be called the natural eye of the mind: and we remedy the defects of both these organs pretty much ...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"I can form a just comparison between those great objects and the little objects around me, in no other way than by transporting myself, at least in fancy, to a different station, from whence I can survey both at nearly equal distances, and thereby form some judgment of their real proportions."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"It is not the soft power of humanity, it is not that feeble spark of benevolence which Nature has lighted up in the human heart, that is thus capable of counteracting the strongest impluses of self-love."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"It is a stronger power, a more forcible motive, which exerts itself upon such occasions. It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"The man within immediately calls to us, that we value ourselves too much and other people too little, and that, by doing so, we render ourselves the proper object of the contempt and indignation of our brethren."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"The man within immediately calls to him, in this case too, that he is no better than his neighbour, and that by this unjust preference he renders himself the proper object of the contempt and indignation of mankind; as well as of the punishment which that contempt and indignation must naturally ...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"There is no commonly honest man who does not more dread the inward disgrace of such an action, the indelible stain which it would for ever stamp upon his own mind, than the greatest external calamity which, without any fault of his own, could possibly befal him; and who does not inwardly feel th...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"Even in good men, the judge within is often in danger of being corrupted by the violence and injustice of their selfish passions, and is often induced to make a report very different from what the real circumstances of the case are capable of authorizing."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"Their view calls off his attention from his own view; and his breast is, in some measure, becalmed the moment they come into his presence. This effect is produced instantaneously and, as it were, mechanically; but, with a weak man, it is not of long continuance."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"His own view of his situation immediately recurs upon him. He abandons himself, as before, to sighs and tears and lamentations; and endeavours, like a child that has not yet gone to school, to produce some sort of harmony between his own grief and the compassion of the spectator, not by moderati...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"He has never dared to suffer the man within the breast to be absent one moment from his attention."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"With the eyes of this great inmate he has always been accustomed to regard whatever relates to himself."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"In proportion to the degree of the self-command which is necessary in order to conquer our natural sensibility, the pleasure and pride of the conquest are so much the greater; and this pleasure and pride are so great that no man can be altogether unhappy who completely enjoys them."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"Misery and wretchedness can never enter the breast in which dwells complete self-satisfaction; and though it may be too much, perhaps, to say, with the Stoics, that, under such an accident as that above mentioned, the happiness of a wise man is in every respect equal to what it could have been u...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"He does not, in this case, perfectly identify himself with the ideal man within the breast, he does not become himself the impartial spectator of his own conduct."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"He soon identifies himself with the ideal man within the breast, he soon becomes himself the impartial spectator of his own situation."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"The man within the breast, the abstract and ideal spectator of our sentiments and conduct, requires often to be awakened and put in mind of his duty, by the presence of the real spectator: and it is always from that spectator, from whom we can expect the least sympathy and indulgence, that we ar...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"When he is at hand, when he is present, the violence and injustice of our own selfish passions are sometimes sufficient to induce the man within the breast to make a report very different from what the real circumstances of the case are capable of authorising."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"They are upon these occasions commonly cited as the ultimate foundations of what is just and unjust in human conduct; and this circumstance seems to have misled several very eminent authors, to draw up their systems in such a manner, as if they had supposed that the original judgments of mankind...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"The first turn of mind has at least all the beauty which can belong to the most perfect machine that was ever invented for promoting the most agreeable purpose: and the second all the deformity of the most aukward and clumsy contrivance."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"He might perceive a beauty of this kind in prudence, temperance and good conduct, and a deformity in the opposite behaviour: He might view his own temper and character with that sort of satisfaction with which we consider a well contrived machine, in the one case; or with that sort of distaste a...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"When two objects have frequently been seen together, the imagination acquires a habit of passing easily from the one to the other."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"Of their own accord they put us in mind of one another, and the attention glides easily along them."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"His mind is continually occupied with what is too grand and solemn, to leave any room for the impressions of those frivolous objects, which fill up the attention of the dissipated and the gay."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"The abstinence from pleasure, becomes less necessary, and the mind is more at liberty to unbend itself, and to indulge its natural inclinations in all those particular respects."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"Justice, the last and greatest of the four cardinal virtues, took place, according to this system, when each of those three faculties of the mind, confined itself to it's proper office, without attempting to encroach upon that of any other; when reason directed and passion obeyed, and when each ...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"The consciousness, or even the suspicion of having done wrong, is a load upon every mind, and is accompanied with anxiety and terror in all those who are not hardened by long habits of iniquity."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"In the steadiness of his industry and frugality, in his steadily sacrificing the ease and enjoyment of the present moment for the probable expectation of the still greater ease and enjoyment of a more distant but more lasting period of time, the prudent man is always both supported and rewarded ...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"In what cases friendship ought to yield to gratitude, or gratitude to friendship. in what cases the strongest of all natural affections ought to yield to a regard for the safety of those superiors upon whose safety often depends that of the whole society; and in what cases natural affection may,...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"The traitor, on the contrary, who, in some peculiar situation, fancies he can promote his own little interest by betraying to the public enemy that of his native country. who, regardless of the judgment of the man within the breast, prefers himself, in this respect so shamefully and so basely, t...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"All the splendour of the highest prosperity can never enlighten the gloom with which so dreadful an idea must necessarily over-shadow the imagination; nor, in a wise and virtuous man, can all the sorrow of the most afflicting adversity ever dry up the joy which necessarily springs from the habit...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"The command of the less violent and turbulent passions seems much less liable to be abused to any pernicious purpose."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"The man who feels the full distress of the calamity which has befallen him, who feels the whole baseness of the injustice which has been done to him, but who feels still more strongly what the dignity of his own character requires; who does not abandon himself to the guidance of the undiscipline...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"When the sense of propriety, when the authority of the judge within the breast, can control this extreme sensibility, that authority must no doubt appear very noble and very great."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"But the contest between the two principles, the warfare within the breast, may be too violent to be at all consistent with internal tranquillity and happiness."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"It is the slow, gradual, and progressive work of the great demigod within the breast, the great judge and arbiter of conduct."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"Regard to the sentiments of other people, however, comes afterwards both to enforce and to direct the practice of all those virtues; and no man during, either the whole of his life, or that of any considerable part of it, ever trod steadily and uniformly in the paths of prudence, of justice, or ...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"Without the restraint which this principle imposes, every passion would, upon most occasions, rush headlong, if I may say so, to its own gratification."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"In such cases, the passions, though restrained, are not always subdued, but often remain lurking in the breast with all their original fury."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"In the system of Plato the soul is considered as something like a little state or republic, composed of three different faculties or orders."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"This faculty Plato called, as it is very properly called, reason, and considered it as what had a right to be the governing principle of the whole."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"The different passions and appetites, the natural subjects of this ruling principle, but which are so apt to rebel against their master, he reduced to two different classes or orders."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"The first consisted of those passions, which are founded in pride and resentment, or in what the schoolmen called the irascible part of the soul; ambition, animosity, the love of honour, and the dread of shame, the desire of victory, superiority, and revenge; all those passions, in short, which ...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"This order of passions, according to this system, was of a more generous and noble nature than the other. They were considered upon many occasions as the auxiliaries of reason, to check and restrain the inferior and brutal appetites. We are often angry at ourselves, it was observed, we often bec...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"If it is excessive, I will go to a house from whence no tyrant can remove me. I keep in mind always that the door is open, that I can walk out when I please, and retire to that hospitable house which is at all times open to all the world; for beyond my undermost garment, beyond my body, no man l...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"But, when we have neither been able to defend ourselves from it, nor have perished in that defence, no natural principle, no regard to the approbation of the supposed impartial spectator, to the judgment of the man within the breast, seems to call upon us to escape from it by destroying ourselves."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"The real or even the imaginary presence of the impartial spectator, the authority of the man within the breast, is always at hand to overawe them into the proper tone and temper of moderation."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"That consolation may be drawn, not only from the complete approbation of the man within the breast, but, if possible, from a still nobler and more generous principle, from a firm reliance upon, and a reverential submission to, that benevolent wisdom which directs all the events of human life, an...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"The judgments of the man within the breast, however, might be a good deal affected by those reasonings, and that great inmate might be taught by them to attempt to overawe all our private, partial, and selfish affections into a more or less perfect tranquillity."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"The soft, the amiable, the gentle virtues, all the virtues of indulgent humanity are in comparison but little insisted upon, and seem on the contrary, by the Stoics in particular, to have been often regarded as meer weaknesses which it behoved a wise man not to harbour in his breast."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"We are so nice in this respect that even a rape dishonours, and the innocence of the mind cannot, in our imagination, wash out the pollution of the body."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"Dr. Hutcheson was so far from allowing self-love to be in any case a motive of virtuous actions, that even a regard to the pleasure of self-approbation, to the comfortable applause of our own consciences, according to him diminished the merit of a benevolent action."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1792

"Every thing encourages me on your account, while my own soul, tormented by an unlucky passion, has entirely lost its balance."

— Anonymous

Date: 1721-22 [1706-1721]

"To stop my ears so hard with cotton, answered the princess, that I may not hear the voices, and by that means prevent the impression they may make upon my mind, and that I may not lose the use of my reason."

— Anonymous

Date: 1712 [1706-1721]

"Sir, said the young man, for God’s sake do not stop me, let me go, I cannot without horror look upon that abominable barber; though he is born in a country where all the natives are whites, he resembles an Ethiopian; and when all is come to all, his soul is yet blacker and yet more horrible than...

— Anonymous

Date: 1706, 1715 [1706-1721]

"At the sight of this object I am not my own master: my soul is disturbed and rebels, and I fancy it has a mind to leave me!"

— Anonymous

Date: 1706, 1715 [1706-1721]

"Call in then your wandering reason, and put yourself in a condition to appear before her as good breeding requires."

— Anonymous

Date: 1706, 1715 [1706-1721]

"Dear object of my soul, cries he, with a feeble voice, receive my faith with this hand, while I assure you with the other, that my heart shall for ever preserve the fire with which it burns for you."

— Anonymous

Date: 1706, 1715 [1706-1721]

"Although your picture be deeply engraven in my heart, my eyes desire constantly to see the original; and they will lose their light if they be any considerable time deprived of it."

— Anonymous

Date: 1706, 1715 [1706-1721]

"hese thoughts which my fingers write, and which I express with incredible pleasure, and repeat again and again, speak from the bottom of my heart, and from the incurable wound which you have made in it; a wound which I bless a thousand times, notwithstanding the cruel torment I endure for your a...

— Anonymous

Date: 1706, 1715 [1706-1721]

"My spirit is tossed with a thousand tormenting things, and my thoughts destroy one another the same moment they are conceived, to make way for more; and so long as my body suffers by the impressions of my mind, how shall I be able to hold paper, or a reed to write."

— Anonymous

Date: 1706, 1715 [1706-1721]

"On the one hand, they make me shed tears in abundance; and, on the other, they inflame my heart with a fire which supports it, and hinders me to die of grief."

— Anonymous

Date: 1706, 1715 [1706-1721]

"Yes, I love you, my dear soul, and shall account it my glory to burn all my days with that sweet fire you have kindled in my heart."

— Anonymous