Date: 1747-8

Power's "amplest, best Extent" is "An Empire o'er [one's] Mind"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1748

"[F]ond anxiety, the glowing hopes, and chilling fears" may "rule [the] breast by turns"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1747-8

In the afterlife "to be worse than worst / Of those that lawless and uncertain thought / Imagines howling" is too horrible

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1748, 1777

"They know, that a human body is a mighty complicated machine: That many secret powers lurk in it, which are altogether beyond our comprehension: That to us it must often appear very uncertain in its operations: And that therefore the irregular events, which outwardly discover themselves, can be ...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748

"Consequently, whenever a Man attempts to subdue his Passions, and to put them under the regular Government of their natural sovereign Reason, the irrational Part must submit to the rational, the Brute must yield to the Man, and the Soul in the Event gain the Superiority over every Passion or App...

— Anonymous

Date: 1748, 1768

Friendly powers create "These maladies in pity to mankind: / These abdicated Reason reinstate / When lawless Appetite usurps the mind"

— Browne, Isaac Hawkins (1705-1760)

Date: 1748, 1777

"In vain do we hope, that men, from frequent disappointment, will at last abandon such airy sciences, and discover the proper province of human reason."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"It may, therefore, be a subject worthy of curiosity, to enquire what is the nature of that evidence, which assures us of any real existence and matter of fact, beyond the present testimony of our senses, or the records of our memory."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"By means of it alone we attain any assurance concerning objects, which are removed from the present testimony of our memory and senses."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748

"Let godlike reason, from her sovereign throne, / Speak the commanding word 'I will!' and it is done."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)