Date: 1724
"As a Stone in a Wall, fastened with Mortar, compressed by surrounding Stones, and involved in a Million of other Attractions, cannot fall to the Earth, nor sensibly exert its natural Gravity, no, not so much as to discover there is such a Principle in it; just so, the intelligent Soul, in this h...
preview | full record— Cheyne, George (1671-1743)
Date: 1748, 1754
"The sensible Beauty, or Good, is refined from its Dross by partaking of the Moral, and the Moral receives a Stamp, a visible Character and Currency from the Sensible."
preview | full record— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)
Date: 1751, 1777
"The one [reason] discovers objects, as they really stand in nature, without addition or diminution: The other [taste] has a productive faculty, and gilding or staining all natural objects with the colours, borrowed from internal sentiment, raises, in a manner, a new creation."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: w. 1755, 1777
"She [Nature] employs it [spiritual substance] as a kind of paste or clay; modifies it into a variety of forms and existences; dissolves after a time each modification, and from its substance erects a new form."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1791
"I will venture to say, that in no writings whatever can be found more bark and steel for the mind, if I may use the expression; more that can brace and invigorate every manly and noble sentiment."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)