Date: 1771

Speaking one's mind is "a publishing of some Energie or Motion" of the soul

— Harris, James (1709-1780)

Date: 1775

"Also those phenomena in nature which depend upon gravity, electricity, &c. are no less various and complex; and the more we know of nature, the more particular facts, and particular laws, we are able to reduce to simple and general laws: insomuch that now it does not appear impossible, but that,...

— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)

Date: 1777

"The philosophical doctrine of the slow recession of bodies from the sun, is a lively image of the reluctance with which we first abandon the light of virtue."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"For it is in moral as in natural things, the motion in minds as well as bodies is accelerated by a nearer approach to the centre to which they are tending."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"The vast conceptions which enable a true genius to ascend the sublimest heights, may be so connected with the stronger passions, as to give it a natural tendency to fly off from the strait line of regularity; till good sense, acting on the fancy, makes it gravitate powerfully towards that virtue...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1779

"A man's natural inclination works incessantly upon him ... The force of the greatest gravity, say the philosophers, is infinitely small, in comparison of that of the least impulse: yet it is certain, that the smallest gravity will, in the end, prevail above a great impulse; because no strokes or...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1782

"I wonder what companions she has met with--there is a magnetism in good-nature which will ever attract its like--so if she meets with beings the least social--but that's as chance wills!"

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)

Date: October, 1784

"HUMAN thoughts are like the planetary system, where many are fixed, and many wander, and many continue for ever unintelligible; or rather like meteors, which generally lose their substance with their lustre."

— Anonymous

Date: 1786

"'Remember,' concluded he, 'that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad: the mind stagnates for want of employment, grows morbid, and is extinguished like a candle in foul air.'"

— Piozzi, [née Salusbury; other married name Thrale] Hester Lynch (1741-1821)

Date: 1791

"In progress of time, when my mind was, as it were, strongly impregnated with the Johnsonian aether, I could with much more facility and exactness, carry in my memory and commit to paper the exuberant variety of his wisdom and wit."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)