Date: 1761
"It is a stronger power, a more forcible motive, which exerts itself upon such occasions. It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct."
preview | full record— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)
Date: 1761
"Even in good men, the judge within is often in danger of being corrupted by the violence and injustice of their selfish passions, and is often induced to make a report very different from what the real circumstances of the case are capable of authorizing."
preview | full record— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)
Date: 1761
"When I endeavour to examine my own conduct, when I endeavour to pass sentence upon it, and either to approve or condemn it, it is evident that, in all such cases, I divide myself, as it were, into two persons, and that I, the examiner and judge, represent a different character from that other I,...
preview | full record— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)
Date: 1762
"Under the discipline of society, these passions are subdued, and in a good measure eradicated. In their place succeed the kindly affections, which, meeting with all encouragement, take possession of the mind and govern our whole actions."
preview | full record— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)
Date: 1765 [1764]
"Arriving there, he sought the gloomiest shades, as best suited to the pleasing melancholy that reigned in his mind."
preview | full record— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)
Date: 1765, 1770
"Till mighty conscience, whose prevailing call / Opes the dread volume of her laws to all."
preview | full record— Wodhull, Michael (1740-1816)
Date: 1765, 1770
"When of old / Arcadia's peaceful shepherds uncontroul'd / Their ranging flocks thro' boundless pastures drove, / Or tun'd their pipes beneath the myrtle grove, / Their laws on brazen tablets unimprest / Were deeply grav'd on each ingenuous breast, / No proud Vicegerent of Astrea reign'd, / Astre...
preview | full record— Wodhull, Michael (1740-1816)
Date: 1766, 1806
"Too fatal proof! since thou, with av'rice fraught, / Didst basely urge (ah! shun the wounding thought!) / That tender circumstance--reveal it not, / Lest torn with rage I curse my fated lot: / Lest startled Reason abdicate her reign, / And Madness revel in this heated brain."
preview | full record— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)
Date: 1768
"When the situation is, what we would wish, nothing is so ill-timed as to hint at the circumstances which make it so: you thank Fortune, continued she--you had reason--the heart knew it, and was satisfied; and who but an English philosopher would have sent notices of it to the brain to reverse th...
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
Date: 1768
"In saying this, I was making not so much La Fleur's eloge, as my own, having been in love with one princess or another almost all my life, and I hope I shall go on so, till I die, being firmly persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another...
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)