Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Thus he learns / Their birth and fortunes; how allied they haunt / The avenues of sense; what laws direct / Their union; and what various discords rise, / Or fix'd or casual: which when his clear thought / Retains and when his faithful words express, / That living image of the external scene, / ...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1745

"Ha! my Brain / Is all on fire! a wild Abyss of Thought!"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1746

"Farewell, for clearer ken designed, / The dim-discovered tracts of mind: / Truths which, from action's paths retired, / My silent search in vain required!"

— Collins, William (1721-1759)

Date: 1746

"No more I search those magic shores, / What regions part the world of soul, / Or whence thy streams, Opinion, roll"

— Collins, William (1721-1759)

Date: 1746

Imagination may play "Unbridled in the fields of day, / Thro endless time, and boundless space, / Continue unrestrain'd her race"

— Cooke, Thomas (1703-1756)

Date: 1746, 1753

"Fear is elusive sorrow, shunning pain; / Active--yet, stop'd--it dims the doubtful brain; / Spirit snatch'd inward, stagnating, by dread, / Slow, thro' the limbs, crawls cold, the living lead: / Form'd to the look, that moulds th' assumer's face, / His joints catch tremblings--life's moist strin...

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1748, 1777

"Chaced from the open country, these robbers [i.e., superstitions] fly into the forest, and lie in wait to break in upon every unguarded avenue of the mind, and overwhelm it with religious fears and prejudices."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748

"Thus on the sands of Afric's burning plains, / However deeply made, no long impress remains; / The lightest leaf can leave its figure there; / The strongest form is scattered by the air. / So yielding the warm temper of your mind,"

— Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley [née Lady Mary Pierrepont] (1689-1762)

Date: 1748

The mind or heart may be like rock: "So numerous herds are driven o'er the rock, / No print is left of all the passing flock; / So sings the wind around the solid stone, / So vainly beat the waves with fruitless moan"

— Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley [née Lady Mary Pierrepont] (1689-1762)

Date: Tuesday, March 27, 1750

"The task of an author is, either to teach what is not known, or to recommend known truths by his manner of adorning them; either to let new light in upon the mind, and open new scenes to the prospect, or to vary the dress and situation of common objects, so as to give them fresh grace and more p...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)