Date: 1744

"Life animal is nurtured by the sun; / Thrives on his bounties, triumphs in his beams. / Life rational subsists on higher food, / Triumphant in His beams who made the day."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"Here, dormant matter waits a call to life; / Half-life, half-death, join there: here, life and sense; / There, sense from reason steals a glimmering ray; / Reason shines out in man."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1745

"With inward eyes, and silent as the grave, / They stand collecting every beam of thought, / Till their hearts kindle with Divine delight; / For all their thoughts, like angels seen of old / In Israel's dream, come from, and go to, heaven."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1759

"Therefore dive deep into thy bosom; learn the depth, extent, biass, and full fort of thy mind; contract full intimacy with the Stranger within thee; excite, and cherish every spark of Intellectual light and heat, however smothered under former negligence, or scattered through the dull, dark m...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1759

"A Genius implies the rays of the mind concenter'd, and determined to some particular point; when they are scatter'd widely, they act feebly, and strike not with sufficient force, to fire, or dissolve, the heart."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1759

"For, consider, since an impartial Providence scatters talents indifferently, as thro' all orders of persons, so thro' all periods of time; since, a marvelous light, unenjoy'd of old, is pour'd on us by revelation, with larger prospects extending our Understanding, with brighter objects enriching...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1759

"When we read, let our imagination kindle at their charms; when we write, let our judgment shut them out of our thoughts; treat even Homer himself, as his royal admirer was treated by the cynic; bid him stand aside, nor shade our Composition from the beams of our own genius; for nothing Original ...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1759

"His mighty mind travelled round the intellectual world; and, with a more than eagle's eye, saw, and has pointed out blank spaces, or dark spots in it, on which the human mind never shone."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1759

"Few authors of distinction but have experienced something of this nature, at the first beamings of their yet unsuspected Genius on their hitherto dark Composition: The writer starts at it, as at a lucid Meteor in the night; is much surprized; can scarce believe it true"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1777

"The philosophical doctrine of the slow recession of bodies from the sun, is a lively image of the reluctance with which we first abandon the light of virtue."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)