Date: 1724

"As a Stone in a Wall, fastened with Mortar, compressed by surrounding Stones, and involved in a Million of other Attractions, cannot fall to the Earth, nor sensibly exert its natural Gravity, no, not so much as to discover there is such a Principle in it; just so, the intelligent Soul, in this h...

— Cheyne, George (1671-1743)

Date: September 10, 1726

"In this last Case one Image of this sort never appears without its whole Retinue; and if a straggling one, in its progress thro' the Brain, chances to strike any of this Chain, all the others will appear, and chime to the last link. These sorts of Chains are what we call Habits; the Temper and P...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 17, 1726

"And what is Education, for the most part, but stocking a Child's Brain with Chains of Images?"

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 17, 1726

"Great care had been taken taken beforehand to arm him with the utmost Rage and Fury against Fanaticism; and his Tutor employ'd all his art and skill to fasten in his Brain a long Chain of Orthodox High-Church Images. The Chain was ended in a twelvemonth; but it took up four years more to strengt...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 17, 1726

"This Train of Images continually revolv'd in our young Parson's Brain; and to preserve them from being jostled out by any intruding Foreigners, who might dispossess the Original Orthodox Inhabitants, the first Link of the Chain was rivetted by Pride, and the two last closed up by those two insep...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: 1729

"Now in order to restore the Fibres of the Brain under the Melancholy Madness, and recover the Mind from those most gloomy, dejecting Circumstances, to which it is chain'd during the Force of this Disease, we must endeavour to bring their Machinulae into closer Contacts with each other; th...

— Robinson, Nicholas (c.1697–1775)

Date: January 1739

"I know that the fear of the civil magistrate is as strong a restraint as any of iron, and that I am in as perfect safety as if he were chain'd or imprison'd."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"Here is a connected chain of natural causes and voluntary actions; but the mind feels no difference betwixt them in passing from one link to another."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1745

"'I am too noble, and of too high a birth,' saith that excellent moralist, 'to be a slave to my body; which I look upon only as a chain thrown upon the liberty of my soul.'"

— Mason, John (1706-1763)

Date: 1748, 1754

"If we attend to that Curiosity, or prodigious Thirst of Knowledge, which is natural to the Mind in every Period of its Progress, and consider withal the endless Round of Business and Care, and the various Hardships to which the Bulk of Mankind are chained down, it is evident, that in this presen...

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)