Date: 1714

"Reason is now no more; that narrow Lamp / (Which with its sickly Fires wou'd shoot its Beams / To Distances unknown, and stretch its Rays / Ascance my Paths, in deepest darkness veil'd) / Is sunk into its Socket"

— Evans, Abel (1679-1737)

Date: 1718

"When first to Think your active Mind essay'd, / And young Ideas in your Fancy play'd, / While dawning Reason's unexperienc'd Ray / Drew a faint Scetch of Intellectual Day, / Your Parents, who the Laws of Heav'n revere, / And make Immortal Bliss their pious Care, / Assiduous strove by mild Instru...

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1718

"But the sweet Bowl's intoxicating Fume / Will by degrees our vanquish'd Sense benumb, / And o'er the Mind diffuse Egyptian Gloom."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1723, 1740

Love is a "glorious Sun within our Souls, / Whose Influence so much controuls; / Ev'n dull and heavy Lumps of Love, / Quicken'd by [it], more lively move"

— Sheffield, John, first duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1647-1721)

Date: 1749

"Yet should thy Soul indulge the gen'rous Heat, / Till captive Science yields her last Retreat / Should Reason guide thee with her brightest Ray, / And pour on misty Doubt resistless Day; / Should no false Kindness lure to loose Delight, / Nor Praise relax, nor Difficulty fright; / Should temptin...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, June 26 1750

"Yet as the errours and follies of a great genius are seldom without some radiations of understanding, by which meaner minds may be enlightened, the incitements to pleasure are, in those authors, generally mingled with such reflections upon life, as well deserve to be considered distinctly from t...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, March 27, 1750

"The task of an author is, either to teach what is not known, or to recommend known truths by his manner of adorning them; either to let new light in upon the mind, and open new scenes to the prospect, or to vary the dress and situation of common objects, so as to give them fresh grace and more p...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, July 3, 1750

"hey are then at the uttermost verge of wickedness, and may die without having that light rekindled in their minds, which their own pride and contumacy have extinguished."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, October 2, 1750

"[T]hough I do not pretend to give laws to the legislators of mankind, or to limit the range of those powerful minds that carry light and heat through all the regions of knowledge, yet I have long thought, that the greatest part of those who lose themselves in studies by which I have not found th...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, April 14, 1750

"[W]e are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude; but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favour, and reason by degrees submits to absurdity,...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)