Date: 1776-1789

"Every mode of religion, to make a deep and lasting impression on the human mind, must exercise our obedience by enjoining practices of devotion, for which we can assign no reason; and must acquire our esteem, by inculcating moral duties analogous to the dictates of our own hearts"

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1776-1789

"Their secret gloom, the imagined residence of an invisible power, by presenting no distinct object of fear or worship, impressed the mind with a still deeper sense of religious horror; and the priests, rude and illiterate as they were, had been taught by experience the use of every artifi...

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1774-1776, 1788, 1803

"From a stranger hand / Ah, what can infancy expect, when she / Whose essence was inwove with thine, whose life, / Whose soul thou didst participate, neglects / Herself in thee, and breaks the strongest seal / Which nature stamp'd in vain upon her heart"

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1774-1776, 1788, 1803

"Well-skill'd / To form the growing soul, and on its young / And opening bud to fix the impression deep / Of every generous thought"

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1777, 1793

"Your gentle hearts / To kind impressions yet susceptible, / Will amiably hear a friend's advice"

— Dodd, William (1729-1777)

Date: 1777, 1793

"Of one, who, warm with human passions, soft / To tenderest impressions, frequent rush'd / Precipitate into the tangling maze"

— Dodd, William (1729-1777)

Date: 1777, 1810

"The soul's impression they no longer share; / His soul is hovering round his distant fair."

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)

Date: 1778

"Ideas thus fixed by sensible objects, will be certain and definitive; and sinking deep into the mind, will not only be more just, but more lasting than those presented to you by precepts only: which will, always be fleeting, variable, and undetermined."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1778; 1779

"Novelty makes a more forcible impression on the mind, than can be done by representation of what we have often seen before; and contrasts rouse the power of comparison by opposition."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1781

"When the outward object hath made its impression, and stamped the idea, the passive organ hath then done its part, and the rest is accomplished by the presiding mind."

— Rotheram, John (1725–1789)