Date: 1734

"A surprising Phænomenon of nature is this, that the soul of man, which ranges abroad though the heavens, and the earth, and the deep waters, and unfolds a thousand mysteries of nature, which penetrates the systems of stars and suns, worlds upon worlds, should be so unhappy a stranger at home, an...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1737

"Souls for ever live: / But often their old Habitations leave, / To dwell in new; which them, as Guests, receive."

— Baker, Henry (1698-1774)

Date: January 1739

"The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: October, 1739

"Bid Fancy quit her fairy cell, / In all her colours drest / While prompt her sallies to control, / Reason, the judge, recalls the soul / To Truth's severest test."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1741

"This will gradually give the Mind a Faculty of surveying many objects at once; as a Room that is richly adorned and hung round with a great Variety of Pictures, strikes the Eye almost at once with all that Variety, especially if they have been well surveyed one by one at first: This makes it hab...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1742

"Celestial Happiness, whene'er she stoops / To visit earth, one shrine the goddess finds, / And one alone, to make her sweet amends / For absent heaven,--the bosom of a friend; / Where heart meets heart, reciprocally soft, / Each other's pillow to repose divine."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1743

"Dearly pays the soul / For lodging ill; too dearly rents her clay."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1743

"When against Reason Riot shuts the door, / And Gaiety supplies the place of Sense, / Then foremost, at the banquet and the ball, / Death leads the dance, or stamps the deadly die."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"The Preservation of Life, the defending the human Body from Decay, and of rendering it a fit Tenement for the Soul to inhabit, in that Season in which she is most capable of exerting her noblest Faculties, are grave and ferious Subjects; with which no trivial Matters ought to mingle."

— Campbell, John (1708-75)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Such then is the abode / Of folly in the mind; and such the shapes / In which she governs her obsequious train."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)