Date: January 1739

"The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"Since the imagination, therefore, in running from low to high, finds an opposition in its internal qualities and principles, and since the soul, when elevated with joy and courage, in a manner seeks opposition, and throws itself with alacrity into any scene of thought or action where its courage...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1741

"Says Body to Mind, ''Tis amazing to see, / We're so nearly related yet never agree, / But lead a most wrangling strange sort of life, / As great plagues to each other as husband and wife.'"

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1743

"Mistaken kindness! our hearts heal too soon. / Are they more kind than He who struck the blow, / Who bid it do His errand in our hearts, / And banish peace, till nobler guests arrive, / And bring it back a true and endless peace?"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1743

"Is this the cause Death flies all human thought? / Or is it Judgment by the Will struck blind, / (That domineering mistress of the soul,) / Like him so strong, by Delilah the fair?"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Then the inexpressive strain / Diffuses its inchantment: fancy dreams / Of sacred fountains and Elysian groves, / And vales of bliss: the intellectual power / Bends from his awful throne a wondering ear, / And smiles: the passions, gently sooth'd away, / Sink to divine repose, and love and joy /...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1746

One's sires's "great soul" may respire in one's breast

— Ruffhead, James

Date: 1747-8

"If in look, if in speech, a girl waves way to undue levity, depend upon it, the devil has got one of his cloven feet in her heart already."

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1754

Authors may "awaken the judgment to exert itself, so as to reject all the alluring bribes which the passions, assisted by the imagination, can offer"

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

Date: 1760-7

"But for sleep--I know I shall make nothing of it before I begin--I am no dab at your fine sayings in the first place--and in the next, I cannot for my soul set a grave face upon a bad matter, and tell the world--'tis the refuge of the unfortunate--the enfranchisement of the prisoner--the downy l...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)