Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"So the glad impulse of congenial powers, / Or of sweet sound, or fair proportion'd form, / The grace of motion, or the bloom of light, / Thrills through imagination's tender frame, / From nerve to nerve: all naked and alive / They catch the spreading rays: till now the soul / At length discloses...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Oft misled / By that bland light, the young unpractis'd views / Of reason wander through a fatal road, / Far from their native aim."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1746, 1753

"Fear is elusive sorrow, shunning pain; / Active--yet, stop'd--it dims the doubtful brain; / Spirit snatch'd inward, stagnating, by dread, / Slow, thro' the limbs, crawls cold, the living lead: / Form'd to the look, that moulds th' assumer's face, / His joints catch tremblings--life's moist strin...

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

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: Saturday, November 9, 1751

"But it is generally agreed, that few men are made better by affluence or exaltation; and that the powers of the mind, when they are unbound and expanded by the sunshine of felicity, more frequently luxuriate into follies, than blossom into goodness."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1755, 1771

"In every human breast there lives enshrined / Some atom pregnant with the' etherial mind; / Some plastic power, some intellectual ray, / Some genial sunbeam from the source of day; / Something that, warm and restless to aspire, / Works the young heart, and sets the soul on fire, / And bids us al...

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: 1773, 1894-1895

"The human Spirit, when it burns and shines, / 'Lamp of Jehovah" Solomon defines. / Now, as a Vessel, to contain the Whole, / This 'Lamp' denotes the Body, Oil the Soul"

— Byrom, John (1692-1763)

Date: 1774

"A learned parson, rusting in his cell, at Oxford or Cambridge, will reason admirably well upon the nature of man; will profoundly analyze the head, the heart, the reason, the will, the passions, the senses, the sentiments, and all those subdivisions of we know not what; and yet, unfortunately, h...

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1775

"What fancied zone can circumscribe the Soul, / Who, conscious of the source from whence she springs, / By Reason's light on Resolution's wings, / Spite of her frail / companion, dauntless goes / O'er Libya's deserts and through Zembla's snows? "

— Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)

Date: 1779, 1781

"The variable weather of the mind, the flying vapours of incipient madness, which from time to time cloud reason, without eclipsing it, it requires so much nicety to exhibit, that Addison seems to have been deterred from prosecuting his own design."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)