Date: Saturday, February 16, 1712

"The Resemblance does not, perhaps, last above a Line or two, but the Poet runs on with the Hint till he has raised out of it some glorious Image or Sentiment, proper to inflame the Mind of the Reader, and to give it that sublime kind of Entertainment, which is suitable to the Nature of an Heroic...

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Wednesday, April 30, 1712

"That Devotion to his Mistress kindles in his Mind a general Tenderness, which exerts it self towards every Object as well as his Fair-one."

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

Date: Saturday, June 14, 1712

"There is something so pathetick in this kind of Diction, that it often sets the Mind in a Flame, and makes our Hearts burn within us."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: 1730

"There is something so pathetick in this kind of diction, that it often sets the mind in a flame, and makes our hearts burn within us."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: 1757

"But when it is such a truth, as I do not only hear, but feel; and it comes home to my own very sense and experience: shall any sophistical reasonings wrangle me out of it; what though I cannot resolve the question, [GREEK CHARACTERS] whence the evil was derived: whether from the soul formed in t...

— Jenks, Benjamin (bap. 1648, d. 1724)

Date: 1759

"It is what is properly called vanity, and is the foundation of the most ridiculous and contemptible vices, the vices of affectation and common lying; follies which, if experience did not teach us how common they are, one should imagine the least spark of common sense would save us from."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"The first consisted of those passions, which are founded in pride and resentment, or in what the schoolmen called the irascible part of the soul; ambition, animosity, the love of honour, and the dread of shame, the desire of victory, superiority, and revenge; all those passions, in short, which ...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"It is not the soft power of humanity, it is not that feeble spark of benevolence which Nature has lighted up in the human heart, that is thus capable of counteracting the strongest impluses of self-love."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: December 10, 1774; 1775

"The mind, or genius has been compared to a spark of fire, which is smothered by a heap of fewel, and prevented from blazing into a flame: This simile which is made use of, by the younger Pliny, may be easily mistaken for argument or proof."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1774; 1775

"There is no danger of the mind's being over-burthened with knowledge, or the genius extinguished by any addition of images; on the contrary, these acquisitions may be as well, perhaps better, be compared, if comparisons signified any thing in reasoning, to the supply of living embers, which will...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)