Date: 1766

"[A] little cunning is sufficient to enable us to take advantage of the discovery; for cunning attains its little ends more surely than wisdom; like the despicable mole which works its way through the greatest mountains, while the noble lion cannot penetrate one foot deep into the earth"

— Scott [née Robinson], Sarah (1720-1795)

Date: 1766

Gallantry "suffers, sometimes, another passion to get before it; reason and interest, often, hold the bridle, and, make it give way to our situation, and, affairs."

— Trusler, John (1735-1820)

Date: October 10, 1769

"My imagination without wing or broom stick off mounts aloft, rises into ye Regions of pure space, and without lett or impediment bears me to your fireside, where you can set me in your easy chair, and we talk and reason, as angel Host and guest Aetherial should do, of high and important matters."

— Montagu [née Robinson], Elizabeth (1718-1800)

Date: 1773

"Know, lovely virgin, thy deluding art / Hath lodg'd a thousand scorpions in my breast:"

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1774

"Acquire an easiness and versatility of manners, as well as of mind; and, like the chameleon, take the hue of the company you are with."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1779, 1781

"When Horace says of Pindar, that he pours his violence and rapidity of verse, as a river swoln with rain rushes from the mountain; or of himself, that his genius wanders in quest of poetical decorations, as the bee wanders to collect honey; he, in either case, produces a simile; the mind is impr...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779, 1781

"The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtilty surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes admires, is seld...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779, 1781

"The good and evil of Eternity are too ponderous for the wings of wit; the mind sinks under them in passive helplessness, content with calm belief and humble adoration."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1787

"Your heavy fat, I will maintain, / Is perfect birdlime of the brain; / And, as to goldfinches the birdlime clings-- / Fat holds ideas by the legs and wings."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1787

"Fat flattens the most brilliant thoughts, / Like the buff-stop on harpsichords, or spinets-- / Muffling their pretty little tuneful throats, / That would have chirp'd away like linnets."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)