Date: 1755

"Thou sun, of this great world both eye and soul"

— Milton [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1755

Despair may darken the imagination

— Sidney [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1755

"Dim, as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars / To lonely, weary, wand'ring travellers, / Is reason to the soul."

— Dryden [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1755

"The sense is like the sun; for the sun seals up the globe of heaven, and opens the globe of earth: so the sense doth obscure heavenly things, and reveals earthly things"

— Bacon [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1755

"That it will immediately become popular I have not promised to myself: a few wild blunders, and risible absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity was ever free, may for a time furnish folly with laughter, and harden ignorance in contempt; but useful diligence will at last prevail, and...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1755

"Thou, superior to the Frowns / Of Fate, can'st pour thy Sunshine o'er the Soul, / And brighten Woe to Rapture!"

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: March 1756

"The thought-kindling light, / Thy prime production, darts upon my mind / Its vivifying beams, my heart illumines, / And fills my soul with gratitude and Thee."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: 1756

"But the Truth is, this unnatural Power corrupts both the Heart, and the Understanding. And to prevent the least Hope of Amendment, a King is ever surrounded by a Crowd of infamous Flatterers, who find their Account in keeping him from the least Light of Reason, till all Ideas of Rectitude and Ju...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1756

"But the Passions which prop these Opinions are withdrawn one after another, and the cool Light of Reason at the Setting of our Life shews us what a false Splendor played upon these Objects during our more sanguine Seasons."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1756, 1766

"This is the excellent law of reason or nature. There is a light sufficient in every human breast, to conduct the soul to perfect day, if men will follow it right onwards"

— Amory, Thomas (1690/1-1788)