Date: December, 1763; 1774

"Thus his own eyes the Bigot blinds, / To shut out light from human minds."

— Lloyd, Robert (bap. 1733, d. 1764)

Date: 1763, 1765; 1766

"Powers that should spread in Reason's orient ray, / How are they darken'd, and debarr'd the day!"

— Langhorne, John (1735-1779)

Date: 1765

"Modern philosophers give them other fine names and Julius Scaliger, in particular, used to call them "seeds of eternity" and also "zopyra"--meaning living fires or flashes of light hidden inside us but made visible by stimulation of the senses, as sparks can be struck by steel."

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)

Date: 1765

"Let those, whose arts to fatal paths betray, / The soul with passion's gloom tempestuous blind, / And snatch from Reason's ken th'auspicious ray / Truth darts from Heaven to guide th'exploring mind."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1766

"We talked of the pleasures of temperance, and of the sun-shine in the mind unpolluted with guilt."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1766

"Faction's torch of sulphurous gleam / Shall fire the heart that feels not Fancy's beam."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1766

"The 'wise' man, makes use of those means, that are most proper for his purpose; he conducts himself, by the light of reason."

— Trusler, John (1735-1820)

Date: 1766

"'Infatuation' acts so strongly, as in some measure, to take away that reason, which is the light of the mind; and thus darkening it, leads a man into the grossest errors."

— Trusler, John (1735-1820)

Date: 1767, 1784

"But if foul Passion, or distemper'd Pride, / Impede its search, or Phrenzy seize the brain, / Then Ignorance a gloomy darkness spreads, / Or Superstition, with mishapen forms, / Erects its savage empire in the mind."

— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)

Date: 1767

"This difference must certainly proceed from the transforming power of Imagination, whose rays illuminate the objects we contemplate; and which, without the lustre shed on them by this faculty, would appear unornamented and undistinguished."

— Duff, William (1732-1815)