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."

— 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,...

— 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."

— 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."

— 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."

— 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...

— 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."

— 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...

— 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...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1770, 1806

"Nor pride nor fickleness could claim / The empire of his mind."

— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)