Date: 1770

"When Reason invades the rights of Common Sense, and presumes to arraign that authority by which she herself acts, nonsense and confusion must of necessity ensue; science will soon come to have neither head nor tail, beginning nor end; philosophy will grow contemptible; and its adherents, far fro...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1773

Meek-eyed Toleration may, gentle as a dove, sit "enthroned upon the benevolent hearts of mannkind"

— Crawford, Charles (b. 1752)

Date: 1773

"The great laws of morality are indeed written in our hearts, and may be discovered by reason: but our reason is of slow growth, very unequally dispensed to different persons, liable to error, and confined within very narrow limits in all."

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: 1773

"The resentment which, instead of being expressed, is nursed in secret, and continually aggravated by the imagination, will, in time, become the ruling passion; and then, how horrible must be his case, whose kind and pleasurable affections are all swallowed up by the tormenting as well as detesta...

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: 1773

"In those dark ages, you will find no single character so interesting as that of Mahomet; that bold impostor, who extended his usurped dominion equally over the minds and properties of men, and propagated a new religion, whilst he founded a new empire, over a large portion of the globe."

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: 1774

"In fine, from that servile spirit, Princes proceed to enforce, as a duty, those exterior marks of veneration; and establishing their tyrannic empire in our very hearts, they command us to bemoan when they bemoan, and to laugh when they laugh."

— Marat, Jean-Paul (1743-1793)

Date: 1774

"Infatuated with a lust of power, he attempted to make all bow under him, crushed all those who opposed his will, and in order to show how unbounded was his authority, exerted his tyrannic empire over even the minds of his people, and armed a ferocious soldiery against those subjects who refused ...

— Marat, Jean-Paul (1743-1793)

Date: 1774

"While awake, and in health, this busy principle [the imagination] cannot much delude us: it may build castles in the air, and raise a thousand phantoms before us; but we have every one of the senses alive, to bear testimony to its falsehood."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1774

"Reason, therefore, at once gives judgment upon the cause; and the vagrant intruder, imagination, is imprisoned, or banished from the mind."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1774

"I expect the incomparable fair one of Hamburg, that prodigy of beauty, and paragon of good sense, who has enslaved your mind, and inflamed your heart."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)