Date: 1732

"He that wants the proper materials of thought, may think and meditate for ever to no purpose: those cobwebs spun by scholars out of their own brains being alike unserviceable, either for use or ornament."

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1732

"Gorgias hath gone further, demonstrating man to be a piece of clock-work or machine; and that thought or reason are the same thing as the impulse of one ball against another."

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1732

"To remove and cast off a heap of rubbish that has been gathering upon the soul from our very infancy, requires great courage and great strength of faculties."

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1732

"It is very possible, the heroic labours of these men may be represented (for what is not capable of misrepresentation?) as a piratical plundering and stripping the mind of its wealth and ornaments, when it is in truth the divesting it only of its prejudices, and reducing it to its untainted orig...

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: Saturday, Aug. 3, 1754; 1756

"The use of these kind of Figures in Tragedy should be as free and bold as possible, and with Respect to Expression, no other Regard is to be paid to it, than to chuse such Words as may be most significantly picturesque, in order to have the more lively Effect on the Imagination, the Passions bei...

— Murphy, Arthur (1727-1805)

Date: 1756

"Yet we have implanted in us by Providence Ideas, Axioms, Rules, of what is pious, just, fair, honest, which no Political Craft, nor learned Sophistry, can entirely expel from our Breasts."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1756

"Not only their Understandings labour continually, which is the severest Labour, but their Hearts are torn by the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all Passions, by Avarice, by Ambition, by Fear and Jealousy. No part of the Mind has Rest. Power gradually extirpates from the Mind every hu...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1756

"But the Passions which prop these Opinions are withdrawn one after another, and the cool Light of Reason at the Setting of our Life shews us what a false Splendor played upon these Objects during our more sanguine Seasons."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"It is rather the soft green of the soul on which we rest our eyes, that are fatigued with beholding more glaring objects"

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1760

"Whenever this shall be executed, it is to be looked upon as the work of true genius; but when fallen short of, as often happens, it is to be deemed the impotent effort of the hard-bound brains of low plagiaries, whose memory is filled with the shreds and ill-chosen scraps of other mens wit."

— Macklin, Charles (1697-1797)