Date: Tuesday, November 20, 1750

"Yet, if we consider the conduct of those sententious philosophers, it will often be found, that they repeat these aphorisms, merely because they have somewhere heard them, because they have nothing else to say, or because they think veneration gained by such appearances of wisdom, but that no id...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1751, 1777

"He must here, therefore, depart from his private and particular situation, and must chuse a point of view, common to him with others: He must move some universal principle of the human frame, and touch a string, to which all mankind have an accord and symphony."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751

"Another Source of mutual Misapprehension on this Subject hath been 'the Introduction of metaphorical Expressions instead of proper ones.' Nothing is so common among the Writers on Morality, as 'the Harmony of Virtue'—'the Proportion of Virtue.'"

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: Saturday, January 25, 1752

"Whatever may be the native vigour of the mind, she can never form many combinations from few ideas, as many changes cannot be rung upon a few bells."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1754

"When temptations arise, and virtue staggers, let imagination sound the final trumpet, and judgment lay hold on eternal Life"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1754

"My dear Dr. Bartlett, said he, your soul is harmony: I doubt not but all these are in order"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1755

"Think not these Tears unnerve me, valiant Friends: / They have but harmoniz'd my Soul; and waked / All that is Man within me, to disdain / Peril, or Death."

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: 1756

"Haste, haste thee quickly to my aid, / And tune my jarring soul to love."

— Bickerstaff, Isaac (b. 1733, d. after 1808)

Date: 1757

"We have on such occasions found, if I am not much mistaken, the temper of our minds in a tenor very remote from that which attends the presence of positive pleasure; we have found them in a state of much sobriety, impressed with a sense of awe, in a sort of tranquillity shadowed with horror"

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1759

"This happy composure, this perfect and complete harmony of soul, constituted that virtue which in their language is expressed by a word which we commonly translate temperance, but which might more properly be translated good temper, or sobriety and moderation of mind."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)