Date: 1755

"Now if the human understanding be, essentially and originally, a tabula rasa, susceptible of impression from the occurrence of every casual object, then the ideas it receives thereby will be the fountain, and, as it were, the materials of all its future proficiencies; and the number and e...

— Sharp, William, Vicar of Long Burton

Date: 1755

"If ever gentle Pity touch'd thy Heart, / Now let it melt!"

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: 1755

"Thou, superior to the Frowns / Of Fate, can'st pour thy Sunshine o'er the Soul, / And brighten Woe to Rapture!"

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: 1755

"But Tears of Joy: For I have seen ZAPHIRA, / And pour'd the Balm of Peace into her Breast"

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: 1759

"Their grief, however, like their joy, was transient; every thing floated in their mind unconnected with the past or future, so that one desire easily gave way to another, as a second stone cast into the water effaces and confounds the circles of the first."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1760-7

The gifts and endowments of wit and judgment may "be poured down warm as each of us could bear it,--scum and sediment an' all; (for I would not have a drop lost) into these veral receptacles, cells, cellules, domiciles, dormitories, refectories, and spare places of our brains,--in such sort, that...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Indeed there is one thing to be considered, that in Nova Zembla, North Lapland, and in all those cold and dreary tracts of the globe, which lie more directly under the artick and antartick circles,--where the whole province of a man's concernments lies for near nine months together, withi...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

The "small channels" of wit and judgment may "seem quite dried up,--then all of a sudden the sluices shall break out, and take a fit of running again like fury,--you would think they would never stop."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"What a cursed lyar! for I am sick as a horse, quoth I, already--what a brain!--upside down!--hey dey! the cells are broke loose one into another, and the blood, and the lymph, and the nervous juices, with the fix'd and volatile salts, are all jumbled into one mass--good g---! every thing turns r...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"It wonderfully explain'd and accounted for the acumen of the Asiatic genius, and that sprightlier turn, and a more penetrating intuition of minds, in warmer climates; not from the loose and common-place solution of a clearer sky, and a more perpetual sun-shine, &c.--which, for aught he knew, mig...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)