Date: 1729

"Oh, let not the soft, penetrating plague / Creep on the freeborn mind! and working there, / With the sharp tooth of many a new-form'd want, / Endless, and idle all, eat out the heart / Of liberty; the high conception blast; / The noble sentiment, the impatient scorn / Of base subjection, and the...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1732

"Each Line's a Transcript of his Mind!"

— Mitchell, Joseph (c. 1684-1738)

Date: 1734

"The Memory is not only a Register of Tales, and Names, and Fictions, (the Materials of common Discourse) but may be called a Register of every thing that enters into the Senses and the Imagination."

— Forbes of Pitsligo, Alexander Forbes, Lord (1678-1762)

Date: 1734

"The question is, how this Familiarity arises? and how the Cabinet comes to be sensible of any thing that's put into it? A Scritore knows nothing of the Papers which the careful Banker locks up in it? Or a Glass, tho' it may be said to receive the Image of a Beau, and he really sees somewhat of h...

— Forbes of Pitsligo, Alexander Forbes, Lord (1678-1762)

Date: January 1739

"Her enemy, therefore, is obliged to take shelter under her protection, and by making use of rational arguments to prove the fallaciousness and imbecility of reason, produces, in a manner, a patent under her hand and seal."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1742

"The human mind cannot continue long quite a tabula rasa; some images must of course be gaining upon its affections, and consequently, forming some propensities or habits."

— Turnbull, George (1698-1748)

Date: 1742, 1777

"Let me consult my own passions and inclinations. In them must I read the dictates of nature; not in your frivolous discourses."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1744

"The first Man knew them by his Reason; but it was this same Reason that blotted them again from his Mind; for having attained to this Kind of natural Knowledge, he began to mingle therewith his own Notions and Ideas."

— Campbell, John (1708-75)

Date: 1745

"We are told by Philosophers, of no small Note, that the Mind is, at first, a kind of Tabula rasa, or like a Piece of blank Paper, that it bears no original Inscriptions, when we come into the World,--that we owe all the Characters afterwards drawn upon it, to the Impressions made upon our Senses...

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1745

"As little would I agree with those Philosophers Constant mentioned, that the Mind resembles a Leaf of white Paper."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)