Date: 1744, 1772, 1795
"The hand of nature on peculiar minds / Imprints a different byass, and to each / Decrees its province in the common toil."
preview | full record— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)
Date: 1745
"The infant Mind is ductile like Wax; you may stamp a fair or ugly Impression upon it, Error or Knowledge, Indolence or Application, Virtue or Vice."
preview | full record— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)
Date: 1746, 1753
"The SOUL, inhabiting the Brain, or acting, where it doubtless does, immediately behind the Optic Nerves, stamps, instantaneously upon the Eye, and Eyebrow, a struck Image of conceiv'd Idea: And that in Fact it does This, and that it does it, in the very Instant of Conception, every Man must ever...
preview | full record— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)
Date: w. 1740, 1748
"But when your early Care shall have design'd / To plan the Soul and mould the waxen Mind; / When you shall pour upon his tender Breast / Ideas that must stand an Age's Test, / Oh! there imprint with strongest deepest dye / The lovely form of Goddess LIBERTY!"
preview | full record— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)
Date: 1748, 1749
"In the fair sex, the soul adapts itself to the delicacy of constitution: thence flow that tenderness, that affection, those lively sentiments founded rather upon passion than reason; and in fine, those prejudices and superstitions whose impression is so hard to be effaced."
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1748, 1749
"Hurried with incessant rapidity by the vortex of blood and animal spirits, one undulation makes an impression, which is immediately effaced by another; the soul pursues it, but often in vain: she must wait to bewail the loss of what she did not quickly lay hold of; and thus it is that the imagin...
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: Tuesday, August 28, 1750
"Yet it too often happens that sorrow, thus lawfully entering, gains such a firm possession of the mind, that it is not afterwards to be ejected; the mournful ideas, first violently impressed and afterwards willingly received, so much engross the attention, as to predominate in every thought, to ...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Tuesday, April 3, 1750
"He that enlarges his curiosity after the works of nature, demonstrably multiplies the inlets to happiness; and, therefore, the younger part of my readers, to whom I dedicate this vernal speculation, must excuse me for calling upon them, to make use at once of the spring of the year, and the spri...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1751
"A weak motive makes some impression: but, in opposition to one more powerful, it has no effect to determine the mind. In the precise same manner, a small force will not overcome a great resistance; nor the weight of an ounce in one scale, counter-balance a pound in the other."
preview | full record— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)
Date: 1752
"His Mind was formed of those firm Materials, of which Nature formerly hammered out the Stoic, and upon which the Sorrows of no Man living could make an Impression. "
preview | full record— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)