Date: 1742

" But what supreme joy in the victories over vice as well as misery, when, by virtuous example or wise exhortation, our fellow-creatures are taught to govern their passions, reform their vices, and subdue their worst enemies, which inhabit within their own bosoms?"

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1746

"With inward view, / Thence on the ideal kingdom swift she turns / Her eye; and instant, at her powerful glance, / The obedient phantoms vanish or appear; / Compound, divide, and into order shift, / Each to his rank, from plain perception up / To the fair forms of Fancy's fleeting train."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: Performed Dec 1756, published 1757

"Within my bosom reigns another lord; / Honour, sole judge and umpire of itself."

— Home, John (1722-1808)

Date: 1759

"The different passions and appetites, the natural subjects of this ruling principle, but which are so apt to rebel against their master, he reduced to two different classes or orders."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"Such persons are not accustomed to consult the judge within concerning the opinion which they ought to form of their own conduct."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"This inmate of the breast, this abstract man, the representative of mankind, and substitute of the Deity, whom nature has constituted the supreme judge of all their actions is seldom appealed to by them."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"It is a stronger power, a more forcible motive, which exerts itself upon such occasions. It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"Even in good men, the judge within is often in danger of being corrupted by the violence and injustice of their selfish passions, and is often induced to make a report very different from what the real circumstances of the case are capable of authorizing."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1770

"But this faculty [Reason] has been much perverted, often to vile, and often to insignificant purposes; sometimes chained like a slave or malefactor, and sometimes soaring in forbidden and unknown regions."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1773

"But he felt not that contrition which results from ingenuous sorrow for our offences; his soul was ruled by that gloomy demon, who looks only to the anguish of their punishment, and accuses the hand of providence, for calamity which himself has occasioned."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)