Date: 1775

"Also those phenomena in nature which depend upon gravity, electricity, &c. are no less various and complex; and the more we know of nature, the more particular facts, and particular laws, we are able to reduce to simple and general laws: insomuch that now it does not appear impossible, but that,...

— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)

Date: 1776, 1781, 1788-89

"At the age of twelve years he embraced the rigid system of the Stoicks, which taught him to submit his body to his mind, his passions to his reason; to consider virtue as the only good, vice as the only evil, all things external, as things indifferent."

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1776-1789

"Like most of the Africans, Severus was passionately addicted to the vain studies of magic and divination, deeply versed in the interpretation of dreams and omens, and perfectly acquainted with the science of judicial astrology; which, in almost every age except the present, has maintained its do...

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1776-1789

"She maintained an absolute and lasting empire over the mind of her son, and in his affection the mother could not brook a rival"

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

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)

Date: 1781

"That he sold so valuable a performance for so small a price, was not to be imputed either to necessity, by which the learned and ingenious are often obliged to submit to very hard conditions, or to avarice, by which the booksellers are frequently incited to oppress that genius by which they are ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1781

"It cannot be said that he made use of his abilities for the direction of his own conduct: an irregular and dissipated manner of life had made him the slave of every passion that happened to be excited by the presence of its object, and that slavery to his passions reciprocally produced a life ir...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1781

"His temper was, in consequence of the dominion of his passions, uncertain and capricious: he was easily engaged, and easily disgusted; but he is accused of retaining his hatred more tenaciously than his benevolence."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1782

"In this view of the case perhaps that species of detraction, which a court of law will not denominate a libel, in a court of conscience and in the eye of Heaven shall amount to murder. I had almost forgot to add that Castillo was a poet."

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)

Date: 1784, 1804

"The apostle wishes and prays that the sovereign and all-conquering grace of God might reign and rule in their hearts and consciences."

— Huntington, William (1745-1813)