Date: 1740

"If any thing could excuse that desperate Extravagance of Love, that almost frantick Passion of Lee's Alexander the Great, it must have been when Mrs. Bracegirdle was his Statira: As when she acted Millamant all the Faults, Follies, and Affectations of that agreeable Tyrant were venially melted d...

— Cibber, Colley (1671-1757)

Date: 1741, 1742, 1755

"Which they explained by a Bottle's being filled with Sea Water, that swimming there a while, on the Bottle's breaking, flowed in again, and mingled with the common Mass."

— Warburton, William (1698-1779)

Date: 1759

"Our sense of the horror and dreadful atrocity of such conduct, the delight which we take in hearing that it was properly punished, the indignation which we feel when it escapes this due retaliation, our whole sense and feeling, in short, of its ill desert, of the propriety and fitness of inflict...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1762

"It is accordingly observed by Longinus, in his treatise of the Sublime, that the proper time for metaphor, is when the passions are so swelled as to hurry on like a torrent."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1762

"A tide of connected perceptions, glides gently into the mind, and produceth no perturbation. An object on the other hand breaking in unexpectedly, sounds an alarm, rouses the mind out of its calm state, and directs its whole attention upon the object, which, if agreeable, becomes doubly so."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1762

"The world we inhabit is replete with things not less remarkable for their variety than their number. These, unfolded by the wonderful mechanism of external sense, furnish the mind with many perceptions, which, joined with ideas of memory, of imagination, and of reflection, form a complete train ...

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1771

"He thinks nothing more absurd than the common notion of Instruction, as if Science were to be poured into the Mind, like water into a cistern, that passively waits to receive all that comes."

— Harris, James (1709-1780)

Date: 1771

"Now as our Feet in vain venture to walk upon the River, till the Frost bind the Current, and harden the yielding Surface; so does the SOUL in vain seek to exert its higher Powers, the Powers I mean of REASON and INTELLECT, till IMAGINATION first fix the fluency of SENSE, and thus provide ...

— Harris, James (1709-1780)

Date: December 10, 1774; 1775

"The fire of the artist's own genius operating upon these materials which have been thus diligently collected, will enable him to make new combinations, perhaps, superior to what had ever before been in the possession of the Art. / / As in the mixture of the variety of metals, which are said to h...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1774; 1775

"Like a sovereign judge and arbiter of Art, he is possessed of that-presiding power which separates and attracts every excellence from every school; selects both from what is great, and what is little; brings home knowledge from the East and from the West; making the universe tributary towards fu...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)