Date: 1741

"Whatsoever, saith he, old Time with his huge Drag-Net, has convey'd down to us along the Stream of Ages, whether it be Shells or Shell-Fish, Jewels or Pebbles, Sticks or Straws, Sea-Weeds or Mud, these are the Ancients, these are the Fathers. The Case is much the same with the memorial Possessio...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"So for Instance, in Children; they perceive and forget a hundred Things in an Hour; the Brain is so soft that it receives immediately all Impressions like Water or liquid Mud, and retains scarce any of them: All the Traces, Forms or Images which are drawn there, are immediately effaced or closed...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Mind, mind alone, (bear witness, earth and heaven!) / The living fountains in itself contains / Of beauteous and sublime."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

Man was ordained to "To chase each partial purpose from his breast; / And through the mists of passion and of sense, / And through the tossing tide of chance and pain, / To hold his course unfaultering, while the voice / Of truth and virtue, up the steep ascent / Of nature, calls him to his high ...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"And if the gracious power / Who first awaken'd my untutor'd song, / Will to my invocation breathe anew / The tuneful spirit; then through all our paths, / Ne'er shall the sound of this devoted lyre / Be wanting; whether on the rosy mead, / When summer smiles, to warn the melting heart / Of luxur...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Need I urge / Thy tardy thought through all the various round / Of this existence, that thy softening soul / At length may learn what energy the hand / Of virtue mingles in the bitter tide / Of passion swelling with distress and pain, / To mitigate the sharp with gracious drops / Of cordial plea...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1773

An awful stillness may be breathed through the soul that, "As by a charm" causes "the waves of grief to subside" and stops the "headlong Tide" of "Impetuous Passion"

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1773

"But if thou com'st with frown austere / To nurse the brood of care and fear; / To bid our sweetest passions die, / And leave us in their room a sigh; / Or if thine aspect stern have power / To wither each poor transient flower, / That cheers the pilgrimage of woe, / And dry the springs whence ho...

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1788

There are those "whom the traffic of their race / Has robb'd of every human grace; / Whose harden'd souls no more retain / Impressions Nature stamp'd in vain; / All that distinguishes their kind, / For ever blotted from their mind; / As streams, that once the landscape gave / Reflected o...

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1789

"A river may as soon be made to flow back to its fountain, as volitions can be exempted from the necessitating influence of motives."

— Belsham, William (1752-1827)