Date: Saturday, May 17, 1712

"Mirth is like a Flash of Lightning, that breaks thro a Gloom of Clouds, and glitters for a Moment; Chearfulness keeps up a kind of Day-light in the Mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual Serenity."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Wednesday, June 4, 1712

"It fills the Imagination with an Assemblage of such Ideas and Pictures as are hardly any thing but Shade, such as Night, the Devil, &c. These Portraitures very near over-power the Light of the Understanding, almost benight the Faculties, and give that melancholy Tincture to the most sanguine Com...

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

Date: 1713, 1734

"I have been a long time distrusting my Senses; methought I saw things by a dim Light, and thro false Glasses. Now, the Glasses are removed, and a new Light breaks in upon my Understanding."

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1714

"But when a monad has organs that are adjusted in such a way that, through them, there is contrast and distinction among the impressions they receive, and consequently contrast and distinction in the perceptions that represent them [in the monads] (as, for example, when the rays of light are conc...

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)