Date: 1759

"Such demonstration have we, that the theatre is not yet opened, in which solid happiness can be found by man; because none are more than comparatively good; and folly has a corner in the heart of the wise."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1759

"The man who eludes our most innocent questions, who gives no satisfaction to our most inoffensive inquiries, who plainly wraps himself up in impenetrable obscurity, seems, as it were, to build a wall about his breast."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1760

"THOU art not to learn, oh, reader! or else thy knowledge is very confined, that Momus once upon a time, proposed in a council of the gods, that every man should carry a window in his breast, that his most secret thoughts might be exposed to all others, which would prevent men from having it in t...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768) [attrib.]

Date: 1760

"By this happy term, association of ideas, we are enabled to account for the most extraordinary phaenomina in the moral world; and thus Mr. Locke may be said to have found a key to the inmost recesses of the human mind."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768) [attrib.]

Date: 1761

"After the cursory view of Nature, which was concluded in my last Lecture, it may not be amiss to examine our own faculties, and see by what means we acquire and treasure up a knowledge of those things; and this is done, I apprehend, by means of the senses, the operations of the mind, and the mem...

— Telescope, Tom [pseud.]

Date: 1762

"For a perfect Knowledge in these, and a proper Attention to Emphasis, will not only lead to, but, at last, actually produce what includes them all, such a masterly Elocution, as can hold the Passions captive, and surprize the Soul itself in its inmost Recesses."

— Buchanan, James (fl. 1753-1773)

Date: w. 1762-3, published 1950

"Lord Elibank has just a cabinet of curiosities [in his mind], which are well ranged and of which he has an exact catalogue."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: w. 1762-3, published 1950

"He considered the mind of man like a room, which is either made agreeable or the reverse by the pictures with which it is adorned."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1762

"Grâce au ciel, nous voilà délivrés de tout cet effrayant appareil de philosophie: nous pouvons être. Hommes sans être savants; dispensés de consumer notre vie à l’étude de la morale, nous avons à moindres frais un guide plus assuré dans ce dédale immense des opinions humaines."

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"But I should think a man of fashion makes but an indifferent exchange, who lays out all that time in furnishing his house which he should have employed in the furniture of his head; a person who shews no other symptoms of taste than his cabinet or gallery, might as well boast to me of the furnit...

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)