Date: 1760-7

"But for sleep--I know I shall make nothing of it before I begin--I am no dab at your fine sayings in the first place--and in the next, I cannot for my soul set a grave face upon a bad matter, and tell the world--'tis the refuge of the unfortunate--the enfranchisement of the prisoner--the downy l...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1762-3

"[T]he five senses in alliance [may] / To Reason hurl a proud defiance, / And, though oft conquer'd, yet unbroke, / Endeavour to throw off that yoke / Which they a greater slavery hold / Than Jewish bondage was of old"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762

"Therefore, I have no one notion, / That is not form'd, like the designing / Of the peristaltick motion; / Vermicular; twisting and twining; / Going to work / Just like a bottle-skrew upon a cork."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1762, 1781

"Bear back, false Winchester, thy proffer'd Bliss, / Weigh Crowns and Kingdoms with a deed like this, / Far, far too light in Wisdom's eye they seem, / Nor shake the scale, while Reason holds the beam."

— Keate, George (1729-1797)

Date: 1763

"True Virtue means, let Reason use her eyes,Nothing with Fools, and Int'rest with the Wise."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

"Think but one hour, and, to thy Conscience led / By Reason's hand, bow down and hang thy head; / Think on thy private life, recal thy Youth, / View thyself now, and own with strictest truth, / That SELF hath drawn Thee from fair Virtue's way / Farther than Folly would have dar'd to stray, / And ...

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1764

"From every speck which hangs upon the sight / Purge my mind's eye, nor let one cloud remain / To spread the shades of error o'er my brain),"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1767, 1784

"So, when on some weighty truth / A beam of heav'nly light its lustre sheds, / To Reason's eye it looks supremely fair."

— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)

Date: 1768

"I beheld his body half wasted away with long expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it was which arises from hope deferr'd."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"But I could wish, continued I, to spy the nakedness of their hearts, and through the different disguises of customs, climates, and religion, find out what is good in them to fashion my own by--and therefore am I come."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)