Date: 1751, 1777

"There seems here a necessity for confessing that the happiness and misery of others are not spectacles entirely indifferent to us; but that the view of the former, whether in its causes or effects, like sun-shine or the prospect of well-cultivated plains, (to carry our pretensions no higher), co...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: Performed Dec 1756, published 1757

"Clouds, all the while have hung upon thy brow, / Nor broke, nor parted by one gleam of joy."

— Home, John (1722-1808)

Date: Performed Dec 1756, published 1757

"Darkly a project peers upon my mind, / Like the red moon when rising in the east, / Cross'd and divided by strange-colour'd clouds."

— Home, John (1722-1808)

Date: 1757

"During such calm sunshine of the mind, these spectres of false divinity never make their appearance."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1759

"The violent emotions which at that time agitate us, discolour our views of things, even when we are endeavouring to place ourselves in the situation of another, and to regard the objects that interest us, in the light which they will naturally appear to him. The fury of our own passions constant...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1760

"On clouds, where Fancy's beam amusive plays, / Shall heedless Hope the towering fabric raise?"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1760

"Say, pines not Virtue for the lingering morn, / On this dark wild condemn'd to roam forlorn? / Where Reason's meteor-rays, with sickly glow, / O'er the dun gloom a dreadful glimmering throw? / Disclosing dubious to th' affrighted eye / O'erwhelming mountains tottering from on high, / Black billo...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1760, 1776

"Smit by thy rapture-beaming eye / Deep flashing through the midnight of their mind, / The sable bands combined, / Where Fear's black banner bloats the troubled sky, / Appall'd retire."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1760, 1776

"Fond he surveys thy mild maternal face, / His bashful eye still kindling as he views, / And, while thy lenient arm supports his pace, / With beating heart the upland path pursues: / The path that leads, where, hung sublime, / And seen afar, youth's gallant trophies, bright / In Fancy's rainbow r...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1761

"It is not the soft power of humanity, it is not that feeble spark of benevolence which Nature has lighted up in the human heart, that is thus capable of counteracting the strongest impluses of self-love."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)