Date: 1756

"They have inlisted Reason to fight against itself, and employ it's whole Force to prove that it is an insufficient Guide to them in the Conduct of their Lives."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1756

"Not only their Understandings labour continually, which is the severest Labour, but their Hearts are torn by the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all Passions, by Avarice, by Ambition, by Fear and Jealousy. No part of the Mind has Rest. Power gradually extirpates from the Mind every hu...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1756

"But the Passions which prop these Opinions are withdrawn one after another, and the cool Light of Reason at the Setting of our Life shews us what a false Splendor played upon these Objects during our more sanguine Seasons."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1756

"I hardly believe there is in any language a metaphor more appositely applied, or more elegantly expressed, than this of the effects of the warmth of fancy."

— Warton, Joseph (bap. 1722, d. 1800)

Date: 1757

"For, as an alloy to its very great advantages, there is something selfish, ungenerous and illiberal in the nature and views of trade, that tends to debase and sink the mind below its natural state."

— Harris, Joseph (bap. 1704, d. 1764)

Date: 1757

"We have on such occasions found, if I am not much mistaken, the temper of our minds in a tenor very remote from that which attends the presence of positive pleasure; we have found them in a state of much sobriety, impressed with a sense of awe, in a sort of tranquillity shadowed with horror"

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"The tossing of the sea remains after the storm; and when this remain of horror has entirely subsided, all the passion, which the accident raised, subsides along with it; and the mind returns to its usual state of indifference"

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"The mind is hurried out of itself, by a crowd of great and confused images; which affect because they are crowded and confused"

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"It is rather the soft green of the soul on which we rest our eyes, that are fatigued with beholding more glaring objects"

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"It can be no prejudice to this, to clear and distinguished some few particulars, that belong to the same class, and are consistent with each other, from the immense crowd of different, and sometimes contradictory, ideas, that rank vulgarly under the standard of beauty"

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)