Date: Tuesday, January 8, 1751

"The old peripatetick principle, that Nature abhors a vacuum, may be properly applied to the intellect, which will embrace any thing, however absurd or criminal, rather than be wholly without an object."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: April 10, 1753

"The same contrariety of impulse may be perhaps discovered in the motions of men: we are formed for society, not for combination; we are equally unqualified to live in a close connection with our fellow beings, and in total separation from them: we are attracted towards each other by general symp...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1757

"Whatever turns the soul inward upon itself, tends to concenter forces, and to fit it for greater and stronger flights of science."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1764

"His [Newton's] regulae philosophandi are maxims of common sense, and are practised every day in common life; and he who philosophizes by other rules, either concerning the material system, or concerning the mind, mistakes his aim."

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1770

"The word 'sentiment' has, of late years, been much used by some writers, to signify, not a formed opinion, notion, or principle, (which seems to be the true, and the old English sense), but an internal impulse of passion, affection, fancy, or intellect, which is to be considered rather as the ca...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771

Speaking one's mind is "a publishing of some Energie or Motion" of the soul

— Harris, James (1709-1780)

Date: 1775

"Also those phenomena in nature which depend upon gravity, electricity, &c. are no less various and complex; and the more we know of nature, the more particular facts, and particular laws, we are able to reduce to simple and general laws: insomuch that now it does not appear impossible, but that,...

— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)

Date: 1779

"A man's natural inclination works incessantly upon him ... The force of the greatest gravity, say the philosophers, is infinitely small, in comparison of that of the least impulse: yet it is certain, that the smallest gravity will, in the end, prevail above a great impulse; because no strokes or...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1782

"I wonder what companions she has met with--there is a magnetism in good-nature which will ever attract its like--so if she meets with beings the least social--but that's as chance wills!"

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)