Date: 1761

"This is thy triumph, celestial friendship! but what is even friendship itself, compared to that perfect union of souls, which connects the most perfect, the most harmonious amity, with ties an hundred times more sacred? where are the men whose ideas, gross as their appetites, represent the passi...

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: 1761

"Abashed and confounded to find my humanity so far debased; to see myself fallen so low from that innate greatness of mind, to which our passion had reciprocally elevated us, I return home at night, with a heart swelling, yet vacant as a ball puffed up with air; sickened with disgust, and sunk in...

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: 1761

"Did not your master Plato maintain, that all the art of man, that all philosophy could not extract from the human mind what nature had not implanted there; as all the operations in chemistry are incapable of extracting from any mixture more gold than is already contained in it?"

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: 1765

"And my heart, within me burning, / Is become like melting wax."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English

"A darkness spreads over my eyes; heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb all its powers, like the idea of a beloved mistress."

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)

Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English

"But I had found it: I did find and know an exalted mind, which raised me beyond myself, and made me all that I am capable of being. All the powers of my soul were extended, and the deep sentiment which nature engraved on my heart, was unfolded."

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)

Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English

"My looks stedfastly fixed upon her fine black eyes; my very soul attached to her's, and seizing her ideas so strongly, that I hardly heard the words which expressed them."

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)

Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English

"I look upon her as sacred, and in her presence I desire nothing; when I am near her I am all soul."

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)

Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English

"'My good friend,' said I, 'whatever is the education of a man, whatever is his understanding, still he is a man, and the little reason that he possesses, either does not act at all, or acts very feebly, when the passions are let loose, or rather when the boundaries of human nature close in upon ...

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)

Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English

"But this heart is now dead, dead to all sentiment: my eyes are dry, and my senses, no longer refreshed by soft tears, wither away, and perish, and consume my brain."

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)