Date: 1760-7

"However, as he knew not what the true cause might turn out, he deemed it most prudent, in the situation he was in at present, to bear it, if possible, like a stoick; which, with the help of some wry faces and compursions of the mouth, he had certainly accomplished, had his imagination continued ...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"It is curious to observe the triumph of slight incidents over the mind:--What incredible weight they have in forming and governing our opinions, both of men and things,--that trifles light as air, shall waft a belief into the soul, and plant it so immoveably within it,--that Euclid's de...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1762

"His mind was so entirely enslaved, that he beheld nothing but in the light wherein she pleased to represent it, and was so easy a dupe, that she could scarcely feel the joys of self triumph in her superior art, which was on no subject so constantly exerted, as in keeping up a coldness in Sir Cha...

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

Date: 1762

"They were received on their arrival by a maiden sister of Mr. Morgan's, who till then had kept his house, and he intended should still remain in it; for as through the partiality of an aunt, who had bred her up, she was possessed of a large fortune, her brother, in whom avarice was the ruling pa...

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

Date: 1762

"The tenderest affections of her heart were too much concerned in what she had done, to leave her the power of feeling any apprehensions of poverty; all the evils that attend it then appeared to her so entirely external, that she beheld them with the calm philosophy of a stoic, and not from a ver...

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

Date: 1762

"Reason governed her thoughts and actions, nor could the greatest flow of spirits make her for a moment forget propriety."

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

Date: 1763

"I will leave Belmont: her will is the law of my heart; yet a few days I must give to love."

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

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: 1769

"Do you think it possible, Lucy, for a Frenchwoman to love? is not vanity the ruling passion of their hearts?"

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)