Date: 1751

"His mind does not receive the impression of the moral world, in the same manner, as wax receives the impression of a seal. It does not reflect the image of it, in the same manner, as a mirror reflects its images: it has a peculiar cast and turn given to its conceptions, admirably ordered to exal...

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English

"Oh! that I could express, that I could describe, these great conceptions, with the same warmth, with the same energy, that they are impressed on my soul!" [Literal translation: "Oh could you only express, could you the breathe forth upon this paper all that lives so warm and full, that it might ...

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)

Date: 1788

There are those "whom the traffic of their race / Has robb'd of every human grace; / Whose harden'd souls no more retain / Impressions Nature stamp'd in vain; / All that distinguishes their kind, / For ever blotted from their mind; / As streams, that once the landscape gave / Reflected o...

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)