Date: April 26, 1695; 1708

"Meditating by one's self is like digging in the Mine; it often, perhaps, brings up maiden Earth, which never came near the Light before; but whether it contain any Metal in it, is never so well tried as in Conversation with a knowing judicious Friend, who carries about him the true Touch-stone, ...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1709, 1714

"We polish one another, and rub off our Corners and rough Sides by a sort of amicable Collision. To restrain this, is inevitably to bring a Rust upon Mens Understandings."

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1733-1735

"Various rude Arts the untaught Ancients knew / To fix Ideas e'er they fled away, / And Images of Thought to Sight convey. / Brass, Wax, or Wood the Characters retain'd, / Some liv'd on Slates, and some the Canvas stain'd; / Some trac'd in Iv'ry, or engrav'd on Stone, / Or sunk in Clay, e're Bi...

— Bowden, Samuel (fl. 1733-1761)

Date: 1737

"My faults will not be hid from you, and perhaps it is no dispraise to me that they will not: the cleanness and purity of one's mind is never better proved, than in discovering its own faults at first view; as when a stream shows the dirt at its bottom, it shows also the transparency of the water."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1751

"This, and to see a succession of Humble Servants buzzing about a Mother, who took too much pride in addresses of that kind, what a beginning, what an example, to a constitution of tinder, so prepared to receive the spark struck from the steely forehead, and flinty heart, of such a Libertine, as ...

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

Date: January 28, 1753

"I have heard that his understanding was rather hurt by the absolute retirement in which he lived, and indeed he had an imagination too lively to be trusted to itself; the treasures of it were inexhaustible, but for want of commerce with mankind he made that rich oar into bright but useless medal...

— Montagu [née Robinson], Elizabeth (1718-1800)

Date: 1754

"How often has that tender bosom, whose glory it would have been to melt at another's woe, and to rejoice in acts of kindness and benevolence to her fellow-creatures, been armed by herself ... not with defensive, but offensive, steel"

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

Date: 1754

"The mind of man does often what princes and states have done. It gives a currency to brass and copper coined in the several philosophical and theological mints, and raises the value of gold and silver above that of their true standard."

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

Date: 1756

"A war of passions in their breasts they feel / As the muse fires, who have not hearts of Steel."

— Cooke, Thomas (1703-1756)

Date: w. 1821, 1840

"The sacred links of that chain have never been entirely disjoined, which descending through the minds of many men is attached to those great minds, whence as from a magnet the invisible effluence is sent forth, which at once connects, animates, and sustains the life of all"

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)