Date: 1733
"Nothing is more void of real improvement and instruction to the mind, and more fulsom, than heaps of quotations, and tedious disquisitions what opinions such and such men were of, in relation to matters properly determinable only by right reason and Scripture."
preview | full record— Browne, Peter (d. 1735)
Date: 1733
"But what they demand is, any ideas of them as different from all the ideas and conceptions of things sensible and human, as these are from things imperceptible and divine: and accordingly they tell you that when they look inward for such ideas to annex to the terms, their mind is an empty void; ...
preview | full record— Browne, Peter (d. 1735)
Date: 1742 [see first edition, 1733]
"The Mind, like a Tabula rasa, easyly receives the first Impression; and, like that, when the first Impression is deeply made, it with Difficulty admits of an Erasement of the first Characters, which in some Minds are indelible"
preview | full record— Cooke, Thomas (1703-1756)
Date: 1734
"Speaking according to natural philosophers, 'tis a clear case, that wit is a generative power, and, if we may so say, becomes pregnant, and brings forth; moreover, as Plato affirms, wants a midwife to deliver her"
preview | full record— Huartes, John
Date: 1734
Wit "has the Power and natural force to produce and bring forth within it self a Son, which the natural Philosophers call NOTION, or Idea, or, as it has been accounted, the word of the spirit."
preview | full record— Huartes, John
Date: 1734
"We see and feel these limbs, and this flesh of ours; we are acquainted at least with the outside of this animal machine, and sometimes call it ourselves, though philosophy and reason would rather say, it is our house or tabernacle, because we possess it, or dwell in it: it is our en...
preview | full record— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)
Date: 1734
"A surprising Phænomenon of nature is this, that the soul of man, which ranges abroad though the heavens, and the earth, and the deep waters, and unfolds a thousand mysteries of nature, which penetrates the systems of stars and suns, worlds upon worlds, should be so unhappy a stranger at home, an...
preview | full record— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)
Date: January 1739
"I know that the fear of the civil magistrate is as strong a restraint as any of iron, and that I am in as perfect safety as if he were chain'd or imprison'd."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: January 1739
"In general we may remark, that the minds of men are mirrors to one another, not only because they reflect each others emotions, but also because those rays of passions, sentiments and opinions may be often reverberated, and may decay away by insensible degrees."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: January 1739
"In that case resemblance converts the idea into an impression, not only by means of the relation, and by transfusing the original vivacity into the related idea; but also by presenting such materials as take fire from the least spark."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)