Date: 1768

"No man cares to have his virtues the sport of contingencies--or one man may be generous, as another man is puissant--'sed non, quo ad banc'--or be it as it may--for there is no regular reasoning upon the ebbs and flows of our humours; they may depend upon the same causes, for ought I know, which...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"Dear sensibility! source inexhausted of all that's precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! thou chainest thy martyr down upon his bed of straw--and 'tis thou who lifts him up to Heaven--eternal fountain of our feelings!--'tis here I trace thee--and this is thy divinity which stirs within...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1769

"[T]he generosity of the Dairo, instead of exciting the least emotion of gratitude in Taycho's own breast, acted only as a golden key to unlock all the sluices of his virulence and abuse."

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1769

"After a weak mind has been duly prepared, and turned as it were, by opening a sluice or torrent of high-sounding words, the greater the contradiction proposed the stronger impression it makes, because it increases the puzzle, and lays fast hold on the admiration; depositing the small proportion ...

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1769

"The first reverend sage who delivered himself on this mysterious subject, having stroked his grey beard, and hemmed thrice with great solemnity, declared that the soul was an animal; a second pronounced it to be the number three, or proportion; a third contended for the number seven, or harmony;...

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1771

"He thinks nothing more absurd than the common notion of Instruction, as if Science were to be poured into the Mind, like water into a cistern, that passively waits to receive all that comes."

— Harris, James (1709-1780)

Date: 1771

"Now as our Feet in vain venture to walk upon the River, till the Frost bind the Current, and harden the yielding Surface; so does the SOUL in vain seek to exert its higher Powers, the Powers I mean of REASON and INTELLECT, till IMAGINATION first fix the fluency of SENSE, and thus provide ...

— Harris, James (1709-1780)

Date: 1755, 1771

"The' etherial soul that Heaven itself inspires / With all its virtues, and with all its fires, / Led by these sirens to some wild extreme, / Sets in a vapour when it ought to beam; / Like a Dutch sun that in the' autumnal sky / Looks through a fog, and rises but to die."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: 1771, 1816

"Thus man [like a cataract], the harpy of his own content, / With blust'ring passions, phrensically bent, / Wild in the rapid vortex whirls the soul, / Till reason bursts, impatient of controul."

— Maude, Thomas (1718-1798)

Date: 1771, 1816

"But now the wavy conflict tends to peace, / And jarring elements their tumults cease, / Placid below, the stream obsequious flows, / And silent wonders how fell Discord grows./ So the calm mind reviews her tortur'd state, / Resuming reason for the cool debate."

— Maude, Thomas (1718-1798)