Date: 1691

"How the greatest part on't is an arrant cheat, and a mischievous one besides,--how little a while we generally stay in't, and yet how unfit to go out on't;--all these Reflections are now so strongly imprinted on my mind, that indeed I wonder how I could be perswaded to come abroad into Light."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1691

"And how deeply his Character is imprinted in my heart, shall be seen by this Impression wrought off from it, shewing what he was, is, and none else ever shall be."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: Licens'd Decemb. 22. 1691

"O Leonora! (continued he) how hast thou stamp'd thine Image on my Soul! How much dearer am I to my self, since I have had thy Heavenly Form in keeping!"

— Congreve, William (1670-1729)

Date: 1692

"Our enticing Alurements are despised by Petrified Hearts, and impenetrable to the Impressions of amorous Passion. With Souls of Adamant they correspond with our Lives, encount'ring our Affections with peevish and wayward Scorn."

— Gildon, Charles (1665-1724)

Date: 1760-7

"Honours, like impressions upon coin, may give an ideal and local value to a bit of base metal; but Gold and Silver will pass all the world over without any other recommendation than their own weight."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

One may try to "so manage it, as to convey but the same impressions to every other brain, which the occurrences themselves excite in [his] own"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"When Dolly has indited her epistle to Robin, and has thrust her arm into the bottom of her pocket hanging by her right-side;--take that opportunity to recollect that the organs and faculties of perception, can, by nothing in this world, be so aptly typified and explained as by that one thing whi...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Secondly, slight and transient impressions made by objects when the said organs are not dull."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"I was but ten years old when this happened;--but whether it was, that the action itself was more in unison to my nerves at that age of pity, which instantly set my whole frame into one vibration of most pleasurable sensation;--or how far the manner and expression of it might go towards it;--or i...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1765 [1764]

"Alone in so dismal a place, her mind imprinted with all the terrible events of the day, hopeless of escaping, expecting every moment the arrival of Manfred, and far from tranquil on knowing she was within reach of somebody, she knew not whom, who for some cause seemed concealed thereabouts,...

— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)