Date: 1754

"Our souls are stampt with God's own image, to this very end, that we should give them in tribute to him, by perfect love: 'render then to God the things that are God's'; by daily offering your whole souls up to him, by fervent acts of love; and you shall have given him your gold."

— Challoner, Richard (1691-1781)

Date: 1754

"The mind of man does often what princes and states have done. It gives a currency to brass and copper coined in the several philosophical and theological mints, and raises the value of gold and silver above that of their true standard."

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1757

"For, as an alloy to its very great advantages, there is something selfish, ungenerous and illiberal in the nature and views of trade, that tends to debase and sink the mind below its natural state."

— Harris, Joseph (bap. 1704, d. 1764)

Date: 1759

"If you, these moral Truths, would comprehend, / To moral Writers, your Attention lend; / By reading them, you'll Wisdom's Honey gain, / And with her golden Stores, inrich your Brain."

— Marriott, Thomas (d. 1766)

Date: 1759

"So Thoughts, when become too common, should lose their Currency; and we should send new metal to the Mint, that is, new meaning to the Press."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1760-7

"Honours, like impressions upon coin, may give an ideal and local value to a bit of base metal; but Gold and Silver will pass all the world over without any other recommendation than their own weight."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1766

"Gen'rous bosoms, more than gems of gold, / Rich funds of morals, knowledge, sense, unfold; / Transmitting each, to each, the rising store, / For wisdom's plants, while cropping, flourish more, A magic circle! whose enchanted round, / Admits no fiend to tread the hallow'd ground."

— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)

Date: 1766

"Her gentle soul's with richer treasure stor'd, / Than Indian mines, and sands, and woods afford."

— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)

Date: November 10, 1783

"He gives, what bankrupt Nature never can, / Whose noblest coin is light and brittle man, / Gold, purer far than Ophir ever knew, / A soul, an image of himself, and therefore true."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785-7, 1791, 1792

"Yet are there some who think (but what a shame!) / Poor people's souls like pence of Birmingham, / Adulterated brass--base stuff--abhorr'd-- / That never can pass current with the Lord; / And think because of wealth they boast a store, / With ev'ry freedom they may treat the poor."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)