Date: 1735-6

"He, too, the fire of fancy feeds intense, / With all the train of passions thence derived: / Not kindling quick, a noisy transient blaze, / But gradual, silent, lasting, and profound."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1737

"Lend me the plaint, which, to the lonely main, / With memory conversing, you will pour, / As on the pebbled shore you, pensive, stray"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1737

"Whence Talbot's friendship glows to future times, / Intrepid, warm; of kindred tempers born; / Nursed, by experience, into slow esteem, / Calm confidence unbounded, love not blind, / And the sweet light from mingled minds disclosed, / From mingled chymic oils as bursts the fire."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1737

"I too remember well that mental Bowl, / Which round his Table flow'd."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: January 1739

"An idea assented to feels different from a fictitious idea, that the fancy alone presents to us: and this different feeling I endeavour to explain by calling it a superior force, or vivacity, or solidity, or firmness, or steadiness."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"On the appearance of such an object [the mind] awakes, as it were, from a dream; the blood flows with a new tide; the heart is elevated; and the whole man acquires a vigour which he cannot command in his solitary and calm moments."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"Ideas may be compared to the extension and solidity of matter and impressions, especially reflective ones, to colours, tastes, smells, and other sensible qualities."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

Personal identity may be like a "a noise, that is frequently interrupted and renew'd ... tho' 'tis evident the sounds have only a specific identity or resemblance, and there is nothing numerically the same, but the cause which produc'd them."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"Let us chace our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions which have appeared in that narrow compass."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: September 17, 1739

"There are different ways of examining the Mind as well as the Body. One may consider it either as an Anatomist or as a Painter; either to discover its most secret Springs & Principles or to describe the Grace & Beauty of its Actions."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)