Date: 1759

"If I am accidentally left alone for a few hours, said he, my inveterate persuasion rushes upon my soul, and my thoughts are chained down by some irresistible violence, but they are soon disentangled by the prince's conversation, and instantaneously released at the entrance of Pekuah."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"From their children, if they have less to fear, they have less also to hope, and they lose, without equivalent the joys of early love and the convenience of uniting with manners pliant, and minds susceptible of new impressions, which might wear away their dissimilitudes by long cohabitation, as ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"By degrees the reign of fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in time despotick."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"Imlac was delighted to find that the sage's understanding was breaking through its mists, and resolved to detain him from the planets till he should forget his task of ruling them, and reason should recover its original influence."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"Their grief, however, like their joy, was transient; every thing floated in their mind unconnected with the past or future, so that one desire easily gave way to another, as a second stone cast into the water effaces and confounds the circles of the first."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1761

"[M]any, therefore, may violate that rule of right, which the hand of the Almighty has written upon the living tablets of the heart"

— Hawkesworth, John (bap. 1720, d. 1773)

Date: 1761

"Hitherto her memory had been wholly suspended by violent passions, which had crowded upon her in a rapid and uninterrupted succession, and the first gleam of recollection threw her into a new agony"

— Hawkesworth, John (bap. 1720, d. 1773)

Date: 1765 [1764]

"Manfred, who, though he had distinguished her by great indulgence, had imprinted her mind with terror from his causeless rigour to such amiable princesses as Hippolita and Matilda."

— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)

Date: 1765 [1764]

"Arriving there, he sought the gloomiest shades, as best suited to the pleasing melancholy that reigned in his mind."

— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)

Date: 1765 [1764]

"Alone in so dismal a place, her mind imprinted with all the terrible events of the day, hopeless of escaping, expecting every moment the arrival of Manfred, and far from tranquil on knowing she was within reach of somebody, she knew not whom, who for some cause seemed concealed thereabouts,...

— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)