Date: 1748, 1777

"And by this means, we may, perhaps, attain a new microscope or species of optics, by which, in the moral sciences, the most minute, and most simple ideas may be so enlarged as to fall readily under our apprehension, and be equally known with the grossest and most sensible ideas, that can be the ...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"The internal principles and motives may operate in a uniform manner, notwithstanding these seeming irregularities; in the same manner as the winds, rain, cloud, and other variations of the weather are supposed to be governed by steady principles; though not easily discoverable by human sagacity ...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"You afterwards become so enamoured of this offspring of your brain, that you imagine it impossible, but he must produce something greater and more perfect than the present scene of things, which is so full of ill and disorder."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"If they tell me, that they have mounted on the steps or by the gradual ascent of reason, and by drawing inferences from effects to causes, I still insist, that they have aided the ascent of reason by the wings of imagination; otherwise they could not thus change their manner of inference, and ar...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"It may, therefore, be a subject worthy of curiosity, to enquire what is the nature of that evidence, which assures us of any real existence and matter of fact, beyond the present testimony of our senses, or the records of our memory."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"By means of it alone we attain any assurance concerning objects, which are removed from the present testimony of our memory and senses."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748

"What, what is virtue, but repose of mind, / A pure ethereal calm, that knows no storm?"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1748

"Ten thousand great ideas fill'd his mind; / But with the clouds they fled, and left no trace behind."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1748

"When in the Hall of Smoke they congress hold, / And the sage berry, sun-burnt Mocha bears, / Has clear'd their inward eye: then, smoke-enroll'd, / Their oracles break forth mysterious as of old."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1748

"But more he search'd the mind, and roused from sleep / Those moral seeds whence we heroic actions reap."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)