Date: 1760-7
"Whether they were above my uncle Toby's reason,--or contrary to it,-- or that his brain was like wet tinder, and no spark could possibly take hold,--or that it was so full of saps, mines, blinds, curtins, and such military disqualifications to his seeing clearly into Prignitz and Scroderus's doc...
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
Date: 1762-3
"With these grave fops, whose system seems / To give up certainty for dreams / The eye of man is understood / As for no other purpose good / Than as a door, through which, of course, / Their passage crowding objects force; / A downright usher, to admit / New-comers to the court of Wit."
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)
"That perhaps this may be a state of imprisonment to the soul, as many of the philosophers thought; and that when it is set at liberty from the body, it may obtain new and noble ways of perception and action, to us at present unknown."
preview | full record— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)
Date: 1764
"To this cabinet volition, or will, has a key; so when an arduous subject occurs, I unlock my bureau, pull out the particular drawer, and am supply'd with what I want in an instant."
preview | full record— Foote, Samuel (1720-1777)
Date: 1766-1769, 1956
"Only this more. The ideas--my lodgers--are of all sorts. Some, gentlemen of the law, who pay me a great deal more than others. Divines of all sorts have been with me, and have ever disturbed me. When I first took up house, Presbyterian ministers used to make me melancholy with dreary tones. Meth...
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1763, 1767
"The guardian genius of his dawning thought, / Who wide disclos'd to wisdom's sacred ray / The eager inlets of his ample mind, / And pour'd upon each opening mental cell, / The virtue-forming scientific beam / With letter'd and religious radiance fill'd, / The fair expanses of his princely soul, ...
preview | full record— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)
Date: 1767, 1784
"Shall we, because we strive in vain to tell / How Matter acts on incorporeal Mind, / Or how, when sleep has lock'd up ev'ry sense, / Or fevers rage, Imagination paints / Unreal scenes, reject what sober sense, / And calmest thought attest?"
preview | full record— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)
Date: September, 1770
"The feelings and passions of the character which he represents, must take full possession as it were of the antichamber of his mind, while his own character remains in the innermost recess."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1773
"Sincere Devotion needs no outward shrine: / The Centre of an humble Soul is Thine."
preview | full record— Byrom, John (1692-1763)
Date: 1774
"Thus imagination is no unskilful architect; it collects and chuses the materials; and though they may at first lie in a rude and undigested chaos, it in a great measure, by its own force, by means of its associating power, after repeated attempts and transpositions, designs a regular and well-pr...
preview | full record— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)