Date: 1701, 1704

And consequently that we may then judge securely, and safely acquiesce and repose our selves in such Judgments, as true and certain, and as it were the undeceiving answers of Truth it self, even that interior Truth, whose School and Oracle is within our Breast, whose Instructions ar...

— Norris, John (1657-1712)

Date: 1701, 1704

"[I]t follows that the most direct and natural Way for the discovery of Truth, is, instead of going abroad for Intelligence, to retire into our selves, and there with humble and silent Attention, both to consult and receive the Answers of interior Truth, even that Divine Master which teaches in t...

— Norris, John (1657-1712)

Date: 1701, 1704

"The application of our Thoughts to other Subjects is like looking upon the Rays of the Sun as it shines to us from a Wall, or upon the Image of it as it returns from a Watry Mirrour, but this is looking up directly against the Fons veri lucidus, the bright Source of Intellectual Light a...

— Norris, John (1657-1712)

Date: 1727

"For it's whole Systeme Aims at this, to make the Furniture of every Person's Mind Alike, their Reason and Faculties the same, and which Garniture, after it has made it a Rasa Tabula, must be of it's own Supplying; 'Tis an Empty Room, without any Thing to Set if off or Adorn it, till this Philoso...

— Greene, Robert (c. 1678-1730)

Date: 1727

"We rather take Notice of this here; Because this Philosophy had made the Mind a Rasa Tabula, or a Blank Paper, or an Empty and Void Room without any Furniture, which therefore it was to Supply; And this is done by Storing it with it's Simple Ideas from Sensation and Reflection, and from thence D...

— Greene, Robert (c. 1678-1730)

Date: Tuesday, May 15, 1750

"The soul cannot long be held in prison, but will fly away, and leave a lifeless body to human malice."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, November 3, 1750

"When we have heated our zeal in a cause, and elated our confidence with success, we are naturally inclined to persue the same train of reasoning, to establish some collateral truth, to remove some adjacent difficulty, and to take in the whole comprehension of our system. As a prince in the ardou...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: August 27, 1751

"The painted vales of imagination are deserted, and our intellectual activity is exercised in winding through the labyrinths of fallacy, and toiling with firm and cautious steps up the narrow tracks of demonstration."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1754

"I say, we may judge surely of them; because our ideas are the foundations, or the materials, call them which you please, of all our knowledge; because without entering into an enquiry concerning the origin of them, we may know so certainly as to exclude all doubt, what ideas we have; and because...

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

Date: 1754

"If we consider these ideas like foundations, they are extremely narrow, and shallow, neither reaching to many things, nor laid deep in the nature of any."

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