Date: 1767, 1784

"But if foul Passion, or distemper'd Pride, / Impede its search, or Phrenzy seize the brain, / Then Ignorance a gloomy darkness spreads, / Or Superstition, with mishapen forms, / Erects its savage empire in the mind."

— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)

Date: 1767, 1784

"This principle / In female minds a feebler empire holds, / Opposing less the specious arguments / For milder rule, and freedom's popular theme."

— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)

Date: 1774

"I expect the incomparable fair one of Hamburg, that prodigy of beauty, and paragon of good sense, who has enslaved your mind, and inflamed your heart."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1774

"Please the eyes and the ears, they will introduce you to the heart; and nine times in ten, the heart governs the understanding."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1774

"It is a very old and very true maxim, that those kings reign the most secure and the most absolute, who reign in the hearts of their people."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1774

"Vanity is unquestionably the ruling passion in women; and it is much flattered by the attentions of a man who is generally esteemed by men; when his merit has received the stamp of their approbation, women make it current, that is to say, put him in fashion."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1777, 1793

"Light sits my bosom's Master on his throne; / Airy and disencumber'd feels my Soul."

— Dodd, William (1729-1777)

Date: w. c. 1779

"[T]hen prudence took her Seat / Within the Soul, and reign'd in Virtue's room."

— Crabbe, George (1754-1832)

Date: 1780

"Hast thou no failings of thine own, / No ruling passion in thy breast, / That robs thee of thy balmy rest?"

— Anstey, Christopher (1724-1805)

Date: 1779, 1781

"This doctrine is in itself pernicious as well as false; its tendency is to produce the belief of a kind of moral predestination or overruling principle which cannot be resisted: he that admits it is prepared to comply with every desire that caprice or opportunity shall excite, and to flatter him...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)