Date: Saturday, April 14, 1750

"This inquiry seems to have been neglected for want of remembering, that all action has its origin in the mind, and that therefore to suffer the thoughts to be vitiated, is to poison the fountains of morality."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1751

"If the brain, or some part of it, were not in a manner the fountain of sensation and motion, and more peculiarly the seat of the mind than the other bowels or members of the body; why should a slight inflammation of its membranes cause madness, or a small compression of it produce a palsy or apo...

— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Date: Tuesday, January 22, 1751

"It is, perhaps, not impossible to promote the cure of this mental malady, by close application to some new study, which may pour in fresh ideas, and keep curiosity in perpetual motion."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1752

"So many tender Ideas crowded at once into my Mind, that, if I may use the Expression, they almost dissolved my Heart."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: Performed Dec 1756, published 1757

"Time, that wears out the trace of deepest anguish, / As the sea smooths the prints made in the sand, / Has past o'er thee in vain."

— Home, John (1722-1808)

Date: 1759

"No further can the Reach of human Mind / Extend, like Ocean, to its Bounds confin'd."

— Marriott, Thomas (d. 1766)

Date: 1760-7

"It wonderfully explain'd and accounted for the acumen of the Asiatic genius, and that sprightlier turn, and a more penetrating intuition of minds, in warmer climates; not from the loose and common-place solution of a clearer sky, and a more perpetual sun-shine, &c.--which, for aught he knew, mig...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"But here, you must distinguish--the thought floated only in Dr. Slop's mind, without sail or ballast to it, as a simple proposition; millions of which, as your worship knows, are every day swiming quietly in the middle of the thin juice of a man's understanding, without being carried backwards o...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1761

"Your sorrow is of the calmer, mine of the more passionate kind, yet though the affection of the mind be the same, it takes its colour in each from the different channels through which it runs; and indeed it is but natural, that the greatest misfortunes should produce the most disquieting anxieti...

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: January 1, 1760 - January 1, 1762; 1762

"Mingled considerations" may produce a "ferment in the oeconomy" of the mind

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)