Date: 1754

"If I cannot, draw out Cacus from his Den; I may pluck the Villain from my own Breast. I cannot cleanse the Stables of Augeas; but I may cleanse my own Heart from Filth and Impurity: I may demolish the Hydra of Vices within me; and should be careful too, that while I lop off ...

— Hay, William (1695-1755)

Date: 1754

"And let every deformed Person comfort himself with reflecting; that tho' his Soul hath not the most convenient and beautiful Apartment, yet that it is habitable: that the Accommodation will serve in an Inn upon the Road: that he is but Tenant for Life, or (more properly) at Will: and that, while...

— Hay, William (1695-1755)

Date: 1759

"He shewed, with great strength of sentiment, and variety of illustration, that human nature is degraded and debased, when the lower faculties predominate over the higher; that when fancy, the parent of passion, usurps the dominion of the mind, nothing ensues but the natural effect of unlawful go...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1764

"Have I well weigh'd the great, the noble part / I'm now to play? have I explored my heart, / That labyrinth of fraud, that deep, dark cell, / Where, unsuspected, e'en by me, may dwell / Ten thousand follies?"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1770-1

"The method that Mrs. Ruby-nose used to dismiss her anger, was to clap herself into an arm-chair with such a whang, that it shook the hot vapours from her brain, and sent them in a hurry down into a capacious store-room called her victualling-office."

— Bridges, Thomas (b. 1710?, d. in or after 1775)

Date: 1770-1

"By this time the choleric vapours, which madam had jogged downwards when she let her broad bottom salute the chair with such a whack, growing warm amongst the hodg-potch they found in her store-room, which we may properly stile a hot-house, began to ascend, and take possession of their former te...

— Bridges, Thomas (b. 1710?, d. in or after 1775)

Date: 1772, 1788

"Tho' some hollow hearts may have much room to spare, / The Devil himself wou'd not chuse to dwell there."

— Stevens, George Alexander (1710?-1784)