Date: 1773

"Human nature is ever liable to corruption, and has in it the seeds of every vice, as well as of every virtue; and the first will be continually shooting forth and growing up, if not carefully watched and rooted out as fast as they appear."

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: December 10, 1774; 1775

"The mind is but a barren soil; is a soil soon exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilised and enriched with foreign matter."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1776-1789

"The ancient families of Rome had successively fallen beneath the tyranny of the Cæsars; and, whilst those princes were shackled by the forms of a commonwealth, and disappointed by the repeated failure of their posterity, it was impossible that any idea of hereditary succession should have ...

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1777

Women "may cultivate the rose of imagination, and the valuable fruits of morals and criticism; but the steeps of Parnassus few comparatively, have attempted to scale with success."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"Almost all the other passions may be made to take an amiable hue; but these two must either be totally extirpated, or be always contented to preserve their original deformity, and to wear their native black."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"It [Genius] is an incommunicable faculty: no art or skill of the possessor can bestow the smallest portion of it on another: no pains or labour can reach the summit of perfection, where the seeds of it are wanting in the mind; yet it is capable of infinite improvement where it actually exists, a...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"The mind, says he, is a barren soil, is a soil soon exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilized, and enriched with foreign matter."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"He must invigorate them by exercise, polish them by conversation, and increase them by every species of elegant and virtuous knowledge, and the mind will not fail to reproduce with interest those seeds, which are sown in it by study and observation."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1779, 1781

"A memory admitting some things and rejecting others, an intellectual digestion that concocted the pulp of learning, but refused the husks, had the appearance of an instinctive elegance, of a particular provision made by Nature for literary politeness."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1781

"In his 'Night Thoughts' he has exhibited a very wide display of original poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions, a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers of every hue and of every odour."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)