Date: 1744

"The Preservation of Life, the defending the human Body from Decay, and of rendering it a fit Tenement for the Soul to inhabit, in that Season in which she is most capable of exerting her noblest Faculties, are grave and ferious Subjects; with which no trivial Matters ought to mingle."

— Campbell, John (1708-75)

Date: September 27, 1746

"A jealous daemon whispers in my breast."

— Hervey, John, second Baron Hervey of Ickworth (1696-1743)

Date: 1758

"In every Feast remember, that there are two Guests to be entertained, the Body, and the Soul: and that what you give the Body, you presently lose; but what you give the Soul, remains for ever."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: May 13, 1761

"In all my Enna's beauties blest, / Amidst profusion still I pine; / For though she gives me up her breast, / Its panting tenant is not mine."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1761, 1790

"Ev'n from this dark confinement with delight / She [the mind] looks abroad, and prunes herself for flight; / Like an unwilling inmate longs to roam / From this dull earth, and seek her native home."

— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787); Browne, Isaac Hawkins (1706-1760)

Date: 1761

"For again, I say, if happiness and peace dwell not in Eloisa's mind, I know not where they will find an asylum on earth."

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: 1762

"He beholds him with bursting joy; and turns, amid his crowded soul"

— Ossian; Macpherson, James (1736-1796)

Date: 1765

"O God, to what a pitch are wrought / The councils of omniscient thought."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English

"My heart is like a sick child; and like a sick child I let it have its way."

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)

Date: 1780

"There meet together, adultery, avarice, perjury, and every other vice; the soul is overwhelmed beneath them, and justice, modesty, and virtue are no more: bereft of these, the mind becomes dry and barren, or only teems with savage and brutal extravagance."

— Francklin, Thomas (1721–1784); Lucian (b.c. 125, d. after 180)