Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"We should find her, if any sensible defect appeared in the mind, more careful in rectifying it, than plaistering up the irreparable decays of the person; nay, I am even apt to fancy, that ladies would find more real pleasure in this utensil in private, than in any other bauble imported from Chin...

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"The first person who came up in order to view her intellectual face was a commoner's wife, who, as I afterwards found, being bred during her virginity in a pawn-broker's shop, now attempted to make up the defects of breeding and sentiment by the magnificence of her dress, and the expensiveness o...

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1775

"Our Author, who almost every where manifests a perfect knowledge in the anatomy of the human mind, proves his science more particularly in a passage of this Scene, by shewing a property in our natures which might have escaped any common dissecter of morals; and this is, our suffering, upon true ...

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1775

"That this is the sense in which our Poet meant this scene to be accepted, is fully evident from his representing both Richard and Richmond to have been asleep during the apparition, and therefore capable of receiving those notices in the mind's eye only, as Hamlet says; which intirely removes th...

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1775

"Momus well wished a window in every man's breast. Physiognomists pretend they can take a peep through the features of the face; but this is too abstruse a science to answer the general purposes of life; besides that education may render such knowledge doubtful, as in the case of Socrates."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1775

"There is a contagion in minds and manners, as well as in bodies, when corrupt."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1775

"But, as I have said before, I do not think that ethic philosophy can ever be a gainer, by overstraining the sinews of the human mind."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)